Bizarre Christian Extremism is Playing a Role in the USA's Attacks on Iran

The United States Is Bombing Iran. Its Troops Are Being Told It’s God’s Plan.

Donald Trump prays with Evangelical Christian leaders in 2017 | Image source: The White House

At least six Americans are dead in Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran. The bombs are falling every hour, there appears to be no plan whatsoever, and the man running the Pentagon has a Crusader’s cross tattooed on his chest. That last point shouldn’t have an effect on the war, however, it looks like this regime is not respecting the USA’s separation of church and state, and the tattoo on Pete Hegseth’s chest may give a glimpse into the exact type of religious extremism the regime are injecting into their leadership.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched illegal strikes against Iran. Within forty-eight hours, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who defends the constitutional rights of U.S. service members, was flooded with over two hundred complaints from troops across every branch of the armed forces, spanning more than forty units at over thirty installations.

The complaints described military commanders, in official briefings, telling their subordinates that the war is a fulfilment of biblical prophecy, in a nation that claims to have a separation of church and state. The reports state that commanders insisted the bloodshed to come is divinely ordained and that the President of the United States has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

With the level of complaints, along with rhetoric from high ranking members of the U.S. regime, it is clear that this is a systematic issue. While the claims are clearly problematic, likely illegal and highly illogical, they are the culmination of the most extreme religious extremist beliefs that circle the higher ranks of Washington D.C.

A Religious War?

A noncommissioned officer on ready-support status, deployable to Iran at any moment, wrote to the MRFF on behalf of fifteen of his troops. Eleven Christians, one Muslim, one Jewish person. He reported that his commander cited the Book of Revelation repeatedly and told them to relay to their troops that the war was “all part of God’s divine plan.” He was one of over two hundred to share the same sentiment to the nonprofit military watchdog.

Mikey Weinstein, the MRFF’s founder and a veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House, described a pattern: commanders across every branch expressing what he called “unrestricted euphoria” at the war as a sign of the approaching End Times. This idea is fringe in military circles, but very common in the largest and most visible variety of Christianity in the USA; Evangelicalism.

These commanders did not show sobriety at the cost of war, and little care was given to the loss of life. Euphoria is defined as ‘a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness’, and should not be used in tandem with the idea of a religious war. Weinstein reported that commanders were “especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfil fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”

Officers in the United States military are celebrating the bloodiness of a war because they believe it brings Jesus back faster, this is religious extremism, embedded into the heart of the U.S. military.

The Man With The Crusades Tattoo

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has a tattoo on his arm that reads “Deus Vult” — “God wills it” — the battle cry of the medieval Crusaders who slaughtered their way across the Middle East. He has called it an emblem of the “modern-day American Christian crusade.” It turns out, he was not being ironic in the slightest.

Pete Hegseth’s arm tattoos | Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Hegseth belongs to a church in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a denomination co-founded by Doug Wilson, an Idaho pastor who describes himself as a Christian nationalist. Wilson’s denomination believes that women should not vote, that non-Christians should be barred from public office, and that homosexuality should be criminalised. Wilson has written that American slavery produced “a genuine affection between the races.” His publishing house put out a book titled The Case for Christian Nationalism, a cartoonishly extreme and xenophobic take on how religion and politics should intertwine in the 21st century.

Hegseth has publicly identified as a disciple of Wilson’s teachings. He moved his family to Tennessee specifically to enroll his children in a school affiliated with Wilson’s network. When CNN aired footage of Wilson’s pastors arguing that women should lose the right to vote, Hegseth reposted it approvingly.

The Pentagon confirmed that Hegseth “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

In February 2026, weeks before the Iran strikes, Hegseth invited Wilson to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon. In front of service members and government employees, Hegseth told Wilson: “Thank you for your leadership, your mentorship… the willingness to be bold. It’s the type of thing we are trying to exercise here.”

A man who believes in Christian extremism preached at the headquarters of the most powerful military on Earth, at the personal invitation of the man who runs it, who has since launched a war that will “bring forth Armageddon”. When the bombs started falling, the commanders started telling troops it was God’s plan. It is no coincidence that the military is run by people who believe these ideas as part of their worldview, their worldview is the influence behind the bizarre words spoken to troops.

Hegseth also runs a weekly Bible study at the Pentagon. It is led by a preacher named Ralph Drollinger, who teaches that God blesses Israel’s allies and curses Israel’s enemies. After Israel struck Iran in 2025, Drollinger spent two consecutive weeks preaching support for Israel to Pentagon staff.

The Department of Defense is not a church, but the Secretary of Defense has turned it into something that certainly looks like one.

The Theology Driving the War

If you do not understand the theology behind this religious extremism, you cannot understand what is happening entirely. While this is bizarre to any logical people looking on, the beliefs held by some of the people involved are things that people truly believe. Just like ISIS, the IDF and others who have used religious doctrine to define military objectives, we must attempt to understand the worldview that made them this way.

Tens of millions of American evangelicals believe the world is approaching a specific, literal sequence of end-times events, with 9 out of 10 pastors in 2020 claiming that signs of the end-times had already been seen. The belief system is called dispensational premillennialism. It holds that Christians will be “raptured” to heaven, a seven-year period of catastrophic tribulation will follow, a final battle called Armageddon will take place in northern Israel, and Christ will return physically to Earth to defeat evil and rule from Jerusalem.

This is not metaphor to the people who believe it, they believe this will be a real-world event. To believers, it is a form of countdown to the end, and we’re nearing the buzzing of their timer.

At the center of the entire prophetic sequence is Israel. About 80 percent of white evangelical Christians in the United States believe the modern State of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy. This belief, known as Christian Zionism, drives unconditional support for Israeli expansion, opposition to Palestinian statehood, and hostility toward any diplomatic process that would require territorial compromise. It produces a foreign policy where peace is not the goal, and can largely answer for the extreme devotion to Israel by the U.S. government over the years.

Trump’s Ambassador to Israel is Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and dispensational premillennialist, a religious extremist by all standards. He has said there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.” He envisions Israel’s borders stretching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates River, borders that match not any modern political reality but a land grant described in Genesis. According to analysis published in The Forward, advancing the conditions for the Rapture and Armageddon is his stated four-year goal as ambassador. That is the man representing the United States in the region the United States is currently bombing.

And here is the part that should disturb everyone, including Jewish supporters of Israel: the prophecy is not kind to Jews. In the dispensational timeline, Armageddon kills millions of Jews. Only 144,000 are to survive, and they do so by converting to Christianity. Christian Zionism supports Israel not because it values Jewish life, but because it needs geography of the region to fulfil their extremist beliefs. The Jews are required to fulfill the prophecy. They are not there to survive it.

This Is Not One Rogue Commander

The evangelical infrastructure in this administration is not a fringe presence. It is the architecture.

Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a self-described Christian nationalist, chief architect of Project 2025, and an evangelical who has written that America is a “Christian nation” whose “rights and duties come from God.” His think tank identified Christian nationalism as a top priority for the second Trump term. He controls the federal budget.

Paula White-Cain, Trump’s closest spiritual advisor since 2016, runs the White House Faith Office, which was established under Donald Trump. She is tied to the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic movement that frames politics as literal warfare between God and demons, and that declared Trump divinely chosen. She once prayed on camera for the miscarriage of “all Satanic pregnancies.” She has direct access to the Oval Office.

Scott Turner, HUD Secretary, is a Southern Baptist associate pastor. Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, has written that God called her to politics. Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs secretary, is a former Southern Baptist pastor.

Trump established a Religious Liberty Commission in 2025, chaired by a Texas lieutenant governor, stacked with evangelical leaders and Christian broadcasting figures. The White House routinely hosts evangelical prayer services. Photos of pastors laying hands on Trump in the Oval Office are posted on social media by the participants themselves, proudly.

The Chain of Extremism

Doug Wilson builds a denomination dedicated to Christian theocratic rule. Pete Hegseth joins it, studies its teachings, identifies publicly as Wilson’s disciple. Trump makes Hegseth Secretary of Defense. Hegseth installs Christian prayer services at the Pentagon, invites Wilson to preach to service members, sponsors a Bible study that teaches God’s favor depends on supporting Israel.

Trump makes a dispensational premillennialist the ambassador to Israel. Evangelical advisors with Oval Office access frame the Middle East in prophetic terms. A Religious Liberty Commission is created and populated with evangelical leaders. The White House Faith Office is handed to a charismatic preacher who believes in spiritual warfare.

Then the bombs fall on Iran, and over two hundred troops report that their commanders are telling them it is God’s divine plan. That the president is anointed by Jesus. That Armageddon is here and the bloodier it gets, the better.

Six Americans are dead, nobody has been disciplined, and the man who created this environment is the man who would oversee any investigation into it.

The majority of military chaplains are Christian, and many are evangelical. Troops who file complaints risk retaliation. Weinstein calls them “a tarantula on a wedding cake.”

The system has been captured by extremists.

This War Isn’t Religious

The United States is waging a war. It has not declared that war through Congress, its own president has admitted he does not know the scope or duration. American troops are dying, American planes are crashing and American bases in the region will never look the same again. And at dozens of military installations, commanders are telling their subordinates that none of this matters because it is all part of God’s plan to end the world.

If conflict in the Middle East is interpreted as inevitable prophecy, restraint becomes irrelevant, any diplomacy would become an obstacle and casualties become collateral in a crazy cosmic plan.

The Department of Defense has regulations prohibiting the use of military authority to coerce religious belief. The First Amendment applies to the armed forces. The Uniform Code of Military Justice provides mechanisms for accountability. Those mechanisms exist. None have been activated, because the extremists run the house.

The law only works when someone enforces it. And right now, the enforcer is the same man who invited a theocrat to preach at the Pentagon and tattooed a Crusader’s motto on his arm.

Regardless of the beliefs of those in charge, this is not a religious war, it is a political war run by religious extremists.

There is nothing wrong with faith. Millions of Americans serve in the military with deep religious convictions and do so honorably, constitutionally, without imposing those convictions on the troops beneath them.

What is happening now is not faith. It is theocratic bullshit that is no older than 300 years old, and almost certainly has nothing to do with the Jesus they claim to follow.

It is the use of the most lethal institution on Earth to advance a religious narrative in which war is welcomed, death is prophetically necessary, and the end of the world is the point. The Constitution was written to prevent this. The founders were explicit. They had seen what happened when governments claimed divine mandate for violence, so they built a wall between church and state, and they meant it.

That wall is not standing, at least, it doesn’t look like it. If no one steps in to separate church and state, we can assume the wall has been bulldozed.

The Constitution cannot enforce itself, and prophecy has a perfect record of being wrong.