Igniting A Cosmic War: How the United States and Israel Are Weaponizing Apocalyptic Eschatology
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Framing War as a Divine Mandate
When geopolitical wars begin to be interpreted as the fulfillment of prophecy, strategy gives way to theology, and diplomacy becomes almost impossible.
The ongoing confrontation involving the United States and Israel on the one hand and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its regional brethren allies on the other hand is fundamentally rooted in geopolitical realities: regional security concerns, nuclear deterrence, strategic alliances, and the balance of power in the Middle East.
Yet alongside these strategic motivations, a powerful interpretive framework is asserting itself within segments of political discourse, military rhetoric, and evangelical media ecosystems: in large parts of Western political and religious discourse, the conflict is increasingly interpreted and framed not simply as a geopolitical struggle but as part of something far older and more dangerous—a civilizational and theological confrontation, as well as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
This paper examines what can be described as a process of geotheological framing, that is, the reinterpretation of geopolitical conflict through theological narratives, prophetic symbolism, and sacred history.
Drawing on documented statements by political leaders, internal complaints from military personnel, biblical symbolism invoked in wartime rhetoric, and scholarly analyses of Christian Zionist theology, it explores how contemporary political conflict can become embedded within apocalyptic narratives about the destiny of nations and the world as a whole.
The result is not necessarily the creation of a purely religious war. Rather, it is the transformation of geopolitical conflict into something perceived by some actors as part of a divine historical process.
Strategy and Narrative
Modern wars are rarely understood solely through military strategy. They are also interpreted through narratives that give them meaning.
In the case of the ongoing confrontation with Iran, these narratives increasingly intersect with religious language, prophetic symbolism, and apocalyptic expectation.
Understanding these narratives does not require accepting them as literal truth. But ignoring their influence would mean overlooking an important dimension of how conflicts are interpreted and justified in public discourse.
Scholars have long examined how religious ideas shape political narratives: historian Paul Boyer observes, “Apocalyptic prophecy belief has profoundly shaped American political imagination, especially in relation to the Middle East”; political scientist Elizabeth Shakman Hurd writes, “Religion is not simply a private belief system; it actively shapes how international conflicts are interpreted and politically mobilized”; and theologian William T. Cavanaugh argues that religious narratives rarely replace political interests; instead, they often intertwine with them.
History offers numerous examples of conflicts later interpreted through sacred narratives. Medieval crusaders marched toward the Levant believing they were participating in a divinely ordained struggle. European colonial expansion often carried the language of religious mission. Even the Cold War was framed by some leaders as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil.
The First Crusade offers the most instructive and documented precedent. When Pope Urban II addressed the Council of Clermont in November 1095, he did not launch a war of territorial conquest but a war of prophetic redemption—the liberation of Jerusalem as a collective act of salvation. Contemporary chronicles, including the anonymous Gesta Francorum, record that thousands of fighters took the cross not for strategic advantage but because they sincerely believed they were participating in the fulfillment of prophecy. The result was the massacre of Jerusalem in July 1099—an act its perpetrators described with pride, revealing how far the certitude of divine mandate can lead. This is the oldest and clearest Western precedent for what this paper calls geotheological framing—and it ended in blood.[1] It is worth noting that Samuel Huntington’s influential framework of a “clash of civilizations”[2] describes conflict between broad civilizational blocs. What the present paper identifies goes further: the active, deliberate weaponization of eschatological narrative by specific political actors to justify military action—a process Huntington’s structural analysis did not anticipate and cannot explain.
These precedents reveal a recurring pattern: when political conflicts become embedded in sacred narratives, compromise becomes more difficult and escalation more likely.[3]
The confrontation with Iran reveals something deeper about how modern conflicts are interpreted. At the strategic level, states pursue familiar objectives: security, deterrence, and influence. But wars are also fought in the realm of meaning. When political discourse invokes prophecy and military rhetoric echoes eschatology, geopolitical conflict can become reframed as a cosmic struggle. History suggests that such transformations are dangerous.
Evidence from Within the U.S. Establishment
As early as 2014, we pointed out in a book[4] that “Whatever their true masterminds and real motives, the attacks of September 11, 2001, provided the ideal opportunity for the United States and, incidentally, its allies to implement their strategy of domination in the Muslim world. The latter, despite its current weakness, is considered a potential adversary that must be continually divided and weakened while exploiting its significant natural resources, particularly energy,” and that “since the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, a new ‘Sykes-Picot’ seems to be taking shape in the region. But whereas the Franco-British agreements of 1916 aimed to ‘facilitate the creation of a state or a confederation of Arab states,’ the ongoing process aims to dismantle existing states. This strategy of ‘massive disintegration’ would allow the United States to achieve a triple objective: ensure the preservation of its strategic interests in the region; strengthen the position of its Israeli ally and thereby ensure its survival as a Jewish state; and redirect the bulk of its efforts and resources to the most important region of the world: the Pacific.”
Assuredly, since the 9/11 events, as explained by Stephen Green[5], a small group of neoconservatives, many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council, and Office of the Vice President, have effectively gutted—they would say reformed—traditional American foreign and security policy. After reviewing the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them, he concluded that they had dual agendas while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its “terrorist enemies.”
Bill Christison[6] and Kathleen Christison reached the same conclusion.[7] They said that since the long-forgotten days when the State Department’s Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, US policy on Israel and the Arab world “has increasingly become the purview of officials well-known for tilting toward Israel.” These people, “who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president’s office.”
Interestingly, the Christisons were of the view that the dual loyalists in the Bush administration “have given added impetus to the growth of a messianic strain of Christian fundamentalism that has allied itself with Israel in preparation for the so-called End of Days.” These crazed fundamentalists, they said, see Israel’s domination over all of Palestine as a “necessary step toward fulfillment of the biblical Millennium, consider any Israeli relinquishment of territory in Palestine as a sacrilege, and view warfare between Jews and Arabs as a divinely ordained prelude to Armageddon,” which raises the horrifying albeit real prospect of an apocalyptic Christian-Islamic war.
These findings were independently confirmed at the academic level by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, whose landmark study of the Israel Lobby[8] documented how a network of organizations and individuals systematically shaped U.S. Middle East policy in ways that served Israeli strategic interests, often at the expense of broader American ones. Rashid Khalidi’s historical account of the Palestinian question[9] further situates this alignment within a century-long structure of settler colonialism backed by successive Western powers—providing the long historical arc within which the current theological-military framework operates. Nor is institutional resistance to this framework without precedent: in 2013, General Martin Dempsey, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly stated he did not wish to be “complicit” in a military strike against Iran he judged strategically unjustified[10]—a posture strikingly absent from the current military and political leadership.
More recently, Mike Huckabee—the United States Ambassador to Israel, appointed by Donald Trump—sat down with journalist Tucker Carlson and was asked about the biblical passage in which God promises Abraham’s descendants the land “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” Huckabee did not deny it. He did not hedge. He answered with chilling calm: “It would be fine if they took it all.”
So far, the Trump administration has remained completely silent in the face of such scandalous and dangerous statements. No explanation, no condemnation, and no sanctions against the former evangelical priest “reconverted” into a diplomat-arsonist and pathological liar, for he knowingly distorted the words of the Bible to serve the Zionist genocidal propaganda. The Bible doesn’t speak of “Israel” and, even less, of today’s genocidal far-right Zionist government. What the Bible exactly says in Genesis 15:18 (New International Version) is, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.”
Also, following the announcement of U.S. strikes against Iran in early 2026, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reported receiving more than two hundred complaints from service members across multiple branches of the American armed forces. These complaints originated from personnel in the Marines, Air Force, Navy, and Space Force across dozens of military installations.[11] Some reports described combat readiness briefings in which commanders framed ongoing operations using explicitly religious language.
According to the complaints, references were made to “God’s divine plan” and to passages from the Book of Revelation describing Armageddon.[12]
Importantly, concerns were raised not only by Muslim service members but also by Christian and Jewish personnel who argued that overtly religious rhetoric in operational briefings risked undermining military neutrality and cohesion.
While such allegations remain contested, they illustrate the sensitivity surrounding the intersection of religion and military command structures.[13]
Commenting on these complaints, Rev. Brian Berghoef wrote on his Facebook page: “When faith is turned into a weapon for war, we know we have gone off the rails and are nowhere near Jesus (…) When extremists like Pete Hegseth hijack these teachings to justify violence, they are literally the Christian version of those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center (…) For the world’s most powerful empire today, to use it to justify current and future conflicts is the work of religious charlatans. Those who do this kind of spiritual fortune-telling often have no background in theology, history, or the original language(s) in which these texts were written (…) the US and Israel are attacking Iran during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This is not by accident. Evangelical Christians have long vilified peace-loving Muslims into a threat that must be stopped. Yet it is this violent, xenophobic Christo-fascism that is a threat to the future of all humanity. All Christian pastors and all religious leaders of goodwill should be denouncing this war, as well as the ideology that undergirds it. This administration imagines they are prompting the return of Jesus. They are not. The only reaction Jesus has to any of this is to weep.”
Biblical Symbolism in Israeli Political Rhetoric
Religious symbolism has also increased remarkably in Israeli political discourse. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invoked the biblical memory of Amalek[14] when describing existential threats to Israel. The reference originates in the First Book of Samuel, where Amalek is portrayed as an enemy of ancient Israel. Within Jewish historical tradition, Amalek later became a symbolic archetype representing those who seek the destruction of the Jewish people.
To what Rev. Berghoef rightly observed, it should be added that a great many Israelis are making the connection between the ongoing war on Iran and the traditional story of “Purim,” which tells of how the Jews living in the Persian Empire some 2,500 years ago were “saved from extinction,” as recently highlighted by the right-wing newspaper The Jerusalem Post: “The combined US-Israeli strike on Iran has brought the Purim story vividly to life in a manner unparalleled in 2,200 years,” conspicuously comparing Trump with Xerxes the Great, who is mentioned in the Purim story. The paper concludes by saying, “With God’s continuing helping hand, we will triumph in this latest, most consequential battle, and we shall bring to our people and to the world at large Purim’s prophetic promise: light and gladness, hope and joy.”[15]
Critics argue that invoking such imagery in modern conflict risks importing ancient religious symbolism into contemporary warfare. Conversely, supporters believe that the reference is metaphorical and reflects the severity of perceived threats rather than a literal call to religious violence.
However, some facts are as undeniable as they are revealing and perilous. Indeed, on 12 August 2025, Netanyahu told news channel i24 that he feels “very attached” to the vision of a “Greater Israel,” which includes the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. He further said he considers himself on a “historic and spiritual mission for generations of Jews that dreamt of coming here and generations of Jews who will come after us.”[16] No meaningful voices in the so-called opposition in Israel explicitly distanced themselves from such expansionist visions, let alone condemned Netanyahu’s words, which have triggered furor and regional concerns over sovereignty—far from it.
Netanyahu’s invocation of sacred mission and Greater Israel does not exist in a vacuum. It draws legitimacy, politically and symbolically, from the dispensationalist theological architecture that has shaped American evangelical engagement with the Middle East for more than a century—an architecture that must now be examined on its own terms.
The Theological Architecture: Christian Zionism
Understanding the religious interpretation of modern Middle Eastern conflicts requires examining the ideology known as Christian Zionism.
This movement draws heavily on the dispensationalist theology developed in the nineteenth century by John Nelson Darby. Dispensationalism interprets world history as unfolding through prophetic stages culminating in the End Times.
Within this worldview, events such as the return of Jews to the land of Israel, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and conflicts involving Israel are sometimes interpreted as signs that biblical prophecy is approaching fulfillment.[17]
It is important to underline that while not all Christians support Zionism[18], most evangelical, Baptist, Pentecostal, and megachurch Christians do based on their belief in dispensational premillennialism.[19]
Defenders of Christian Zionist political engagement argue that their support for Israel reflects covenant theology and solidarity with a historically persecuted people, not a call for war—and that prophetic belief does not mechanically translate into policy. This position deserves honest engagement. Yet the documented cases examined in this paper—from Hagee’s sermon delivered beneath a banner reading “God’s Coming… Operation Epic Fury” to Huckabee’s calm endorsement of territorial maximalism—suggest that the line between theological conviction and political action has been systematically erased by key figures, not merely inferred by critics. When eschatology shapes military briefings and prophetic expectation informs ambassadorial statements, the argument that belief and policy remain separate becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
By contrast, practicing the nonviolence that Jesus Christ demonstrated in the Gospels, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Peace churches do not support Christian Zionism in their biblical interpretations of the End Times. One of them is Dr. Chuck Baldwin, a prominent American evangelical pastor, who was the presidential nominee of the Constitution Party for the 2008 US presidential election. In an interview[20] he gave in 2018, he said he preached Christian Zionism for more than 30 years before rejecting it, revealing his step-by-step account of his long journey of change to put aside the distorted view of history required to believe its teachings.
In a similar way, there are Jews who oppose Zionism. Among them are the Ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe Jews must wait for the coming Messiah to lead them back to the land of Israel. In rabbinic thought, the Messiah (Moshiach in Hebrew, meaning literally “the anointed one”) is the king who will redeem and rule Israel at the climax of human history and is the instrument by which the kingdom of God will be established. Jewish tradition affirms at least five things about the Messiah: He will be a descendant of King David, gain sovereignty over the land of Israel, gather the Jews there from the four corners of the earth, restore them to full observance of Torah law, and, as a grand finale, bring peace to the whole world.[21]
In this register of apocalyptic one-upmanship, the prize undoubtedly goes to John Hagee, the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church, a charismatic megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and the founder and National Chairman of Christians United for Israel, incorporated on February 7, 2006. His media empire reaches an estimated 150 million households across multiple continents—a reach that makes his theological-political framing a matter of geopolitical consequence, not merely ecclesiastical interest.
On 14 November, 2023, Hagee addressed a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., during which he affirmed the need for Israel to decide the contours of the war on Gaza and to not cave into international pressure. “You, the leaders of Israel, and you alone, should determine how this war is going to be conducted and concluded. You decide—no one else.” And only two days after President Donald Trump ordered the start of “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran, the pastor delivered a sermon at his Cornerstone Church, standing in front of a banner that read “God’s Coming… Operation Epic Fury.” Hagee thanked Trump, “whose wisdom and courage has crushed the enemies of Zion.” He then quickly pivoted to a familiar refrain, saying that the American and Israeli attack on Iran will trigger a series of biblically prophesied events, including the invasion of Israel by a Russian-led army and Jesus’s eventual defeat of the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon.
The Third Temple Imperative: When Theology Becomes Architecture
The construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—on the site currently occupied by the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock—is not a fringe idea. It sits at the theological core of the dispensationalist end-times architecture that runs through this entire investigation.
Within Christian Zionist eschatology, the rebuilding of the Temple is not optional. It is a prerequisite. The sequence is explicit in the theology: the Temple must be rebuilt; the Antichrist will defile it—the “Abomination of Desolation” referenced in Daniel 9:27, Matthew 24:15, and 2 Thessalonians 2:4; this triggers the Great Tribulation, which precedes the Battle of Armageddon, which precedes the Second Coming of Christ.
For millions of dispensationalist evangelicals, supporting the conditions that make the Temple possible is therefore an act of prophetic faithfulness—not political preference. The genealogy of the Antichrist figure central to this sequence—as the ultimate desecrator of the rebuilt Temple—has been rigorously traced by theologian Bernard McGinn across two thousand years of Christian eschatological imagination,[22] reminding us that what presents itself as timeless biblical truth is in fact a historically constructed interpretive framework—one now being operationalized as foreign policy.
The Iran Connection
The Temple Mount is currently administered under Jordanian Waqf authority. The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand on the site. Any construction of a Third Temple requires their removal or destruction. Iran is the primary military and ideological guarantor of resistance to Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, through its support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the broader Axis of Resistance.
The theological logic therefore runs as follows: eliminating Iranian power removes the principal military shield protecting the Islamic holy sites—thereby bringing the conditions for Temple construction measurably closer. Whether or not this calculation is consciously articulated by policymakers, it operates as a structural alignment between the war on Iran and the Third Temple project.
In March 2026, commentator Tucker Carlson stated publicly[23] that “key players involved in this war believe that what we’re seeing will usher in events that begin with the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and the rebuilding of the third temple.” More disturbingly, Carlson openly raised the scenario of a staged destruction of the Al-Aqsa complex attributed to Iran—a possibility he summarized with the words, “Oops, the Iranians did it.” Whatever its sourcing, the public utterance of this scenario by a mainstream figure with a mass audience is itself a political event that demands documentation.
Documented Institutional Presence
This is not purely theological speculation—nor is it a phenomenon born of the current crisis. As early as 2000, journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg documented in The End of Days[24] the convergence between American dispensationalist eschatology, the Jewish Temple rebuilding movement, and the geopolitical explosive that the Temple Mount represented—long before it became a live strategic emergency.
What Gorenberg identified as a latent collision is now an active one. The Temple Institute in Jerusalem has been preparing ritual objects, priestly garments, and architectural plans for the Third Temple for decades. Jewish visits to the Temple Mount have reached historic numbers. Several figures close to the current US administration, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have spoken publicly about Israel’s prophetic destiny. Members of Netanyahu’s coalition—particularly Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich—have made statements signaling movement toward asserting Israeli sovereignty over the site.
It should be noted that the desire to rebuild the Temple is not universal within Judaism. Jewish religious life reorganized itself around prayer, Torah study, and synagogue practice after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and has functioned without a physical temple for nearly two thousand years. The Temple rebuilding movement represents a specific theological current, not a consensus.
The Islamic Dimension
For the Muslim world, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam. Any threat to it—real or perceived—carries a mobilizing power that transcends national, ethnic, and sectarian boundaries. Iran has consistently positioned itself as the defender of Al-Aqsa, which partly explains the extraordinary resonance of its rhetoric across Sunni and Shia populations alike. Historian Ussama Makdisi has documented that interconfessional coexistence was historically the norm in the Levant,[25] which makes the destruction wrought by imported eschatological agendas all the more historically aberrant. That the threat to Al-Aqsa now resonates beyond Shia-Sunni divides was starkly illustrated in November 2023, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared at an emergency summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation: “Al-Aqsa is not only a Palestinian cause. It is the cause of all Muslims, of all humanity.”[26]
This means the Third Temple dimension is not merely a theological footnote. It is one of the deepest fault lines in the entire confrontation—and one that is almost entirely absent from Western mainstream coverage of the Iran conflict
Persia in Prophesy
Political rhetoric surrounding Iran often adopts moral language that echoes religious frameworks. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, for one, has described the Iranian government as evil and framed confrontation with Tehran as a struggle between justice and tyranny.[27]
Although such language is common in political discourse, it also resonates strongly with religious narratives portraying conflicts as battles between good and evil.
What’s more is that apocalyptic interpretations frequently reference passages from the Book of Ezekiel. These passages describe a coalition of nations led by “Gog” attacking Israel in the final days. In modern evangelical interpretation, the ancient name Persia mentioned in the text is often associated with modern Iran. And while many biblical scholars reject direct geopolitical applications of these texts, such interpretations remain influential in certain religious media networks.[28]
Most probably, when he wrote his book[29]—which quickly became a global success—Reza Aslan could not have imagined that it would probably be his native country, Iran, and not the Islamic fundamentalism of the likes of Al-Qaeda and Daesh, that could be the spark that would ignite the Middle East as part of a “cosmic war” initiated by Washington and Tel Aviv. His book is an in-depth study of the ideology fueling militants throughout the Muslim world and an exploration of religious violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, he wrote, thought they were fighting a cosmic war. He maintained that by infusing the War on Terror with the same kind of religiously polarizing rhetoric, the United States is also fighting a cosmic war—a war that can’t be won. Aslan argues that we must strip conflicts of their religious connotations and address the earthly grievances that always lie behind the cosmic impulse. The truth, he added, is that the 9/11 attacks “were an invitation to a war that was already underway—a cosmic war that, in the mind of the jihadist, has been raging between the forces of good and evil since time immemorial. It was an invitation that a great many Americans were more than willing to accept.” How do you win a cosmic war? By refusing to fight in one, Aslan concluded.
In support of this argument, he cites the remarks of Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who had been tasked with tracking down Osama Bin Laden. Addressing a congregation at the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Oregon, in June 2003, Boykin asked, “But who is our enemy? It is not Osama Bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers (…) And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you don’t believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the very Bible that tells you about God. I am a warrior. One day I will take off this uniform, but I will always be a warrior. And what I am here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors for the kingdom of God.”[30]
Aslan could equally have drawn on the story revealed in 2007 by the University of Lausanne review “Allez Savoir.”[31] Indeed, in 2003, Thomas Römer, Professor of Theology at the University of Lausanne, received a phone call from the Élysée Palace. President Jacques Chirac’s advisors wanted to know more about Gog and Magog—two mysterious names that had been invoked by George W. Bush as he sought to persuade France to join the war in Iraq. In the weeks preceding the intervention in Iraq, Bush reportedly told his skeptical French counterpart that “Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East, and that biblical prophecies were being fulfilled.” After leaving the Élysée, Chirac himself confirmed the episode to journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, recounting that Bush had appealed to their shared Christian faith and declared that this confrontation was part of a divinely ordained mission—an account Chirac described with barely concealed disbelief at how a world leader could hold beliefs so superficial and fanatical.
In such a war—framed in such terms by certain influential leaders and their ideologues, and understood in such terms by public opinion on both sides—Aslan explains, “the enemy is neither an army nor a state, but the devil himself. The battle is about civilization. Our identity is at stake. We cannot negotiate. We cannot capitulate. We cannot lose. Nor can we win.” The logical consequence, he concludes, is that the ground has in all likelihood been prepared for “a terrifying new age of religious war.”
Concluding Reflections
When wars are believed to be divinely mandated, diplomacy becomes appeasement and compromise becomes betrayal. Yet the great religious traditions themselves contain warnings against turning faith into a weapon. As the Qur’an reminds humanity, “O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another”—Qur’an 49:13. The verse reminds us that diversity among civilizations was meant to encourage understanding—not sacred conflict.
Moments of rupture with this logic do exist in the record. In June 2009, at Cairo University, President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world with the words: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”[32] The speech was imperfect, and the policies that followed fell far short of its promise. Yet it demonstrated that U.S. engagement with the Muslim world need not be filtered through apocalyptic eschatology. The abandonment of that rhetorical framework—and its replacement by the theological warfare discourse documented in this paper—is itself a political choice, not an inevitability.
The real danger is not that prophecies exist. The danger arises when political power begins to believe it has a duty to fulfill them. As we wrote[33] in an article in 2017—whose conclusion we reiterate forcefully today—“It must be recognized that the rhetoric on the ‘clash of civilizations,’ constantly and tirelessly repeated by some since the end of the Cold War and the subsequent disappearance of the ‘indispensable enemy,’ seems to have achieved the objective assigned to it, chiefly by those who benefit from and pull the strings of the perpetuation of conflicts all over the world. This rhetoric has thus produced a dangerous ‘clash of fundamentalisms,’ which is updating the notions of ‘revenge of God,’ ‘Crusades,’ and ‘Jihad’ and adding new ones such as ‘Islamofascism.’
The consequence of this dramatic turn of events is illustrated, on the sought and obtained ground of confrontation, by a ‘clash of barbarities.’ In today’s increasing international turmoil, nobody should be blind to the fact that the biggest danger associated with this change is that since the end of World War II, the world has entered the age of the ‘supreme weapon’—the atomic bomb—and other weapons of mass destruction, and that extremists on all sides are promising and fervently promoting a ‘Cosmic War’ for ‘the triumph of Good over Evil.’ For some of them, it is a religious war, the ultimate war prior to the Apocalypse or the end times, whose theatre of operations one party sets in ‘Armageddon’ and the other in ‘Dabiq,’ both places being situated in the Levant, comprising Syria, which is today being put to fire and sword.
Isn’t it insane to believe that our civilized world is unable to find a path other than the one leading toward Mutually Agreed Destruction (MAD)?”
Endnotes
[1] Pope Urban II, speech at the Council of Clermont, November 27, 1095. Primary sources include: Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, c. 1127; anonymous, Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, c. 1100–1101. See also: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
[2] Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996.
[3] Karen Armstrong, “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence”, Knopf, 2014.
[4] Amir Nour, “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot”, op cit.
[5] Stephen Green, “Neo-Cons, Israel, and the Bush Administration”, Counterpunch, February 28th, 2004.
[6] Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
[7] Bill Christison and Kathleen Christison, “The Bush Neocons and Israel,” Counterpunch, September 6th, 2004.
[8] John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2007.
[9] Rashid Khalidi, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017”, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2020.
[10] General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, public statement to reporters, August 30, 2013. Dempsey stated he did not want to be “complicit” in a military strike against Iran that he judged strategically unjustified. See also: Thom Shanker and Michael R. Gordon, “Joint Chiefs Chairman Expresses Caution on Military Action in Syria,” The New York Times, August 30, 2013.
[11] Jonathan Larsen Substack, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, March 2–4, 2026.
[12] Landon Schnabel, Cornell University Arts & Sciences, March 5th, 2026.
[13] Josh Olds, Baptist News Global, March 3rd, 2026.
[14] Abed Azzam, Analyse & Kritik, 2025.
[15] Stewart Weissmarch, “Purim 2026: History repeats itself in Iran war”, The Jerusalem Post, March 3rd, 2026.
[16] Watch Netanyahu’s interview on the i24NEWS English YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/u8xhaxo2JJY
[17] Stephen Sizer, “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?”, InterVarsity Press, 2004; Matthew D. Taylor, “The Violent Take It by Force”, Broadleaf Books, 2021.
[18] Read Stephen R. Sizer, “Christian Zionism: Justifying Apartheid in the Name of God,” Churchman, 2001.
[19] See: Got Questions Ministries, “What is dispensational premillennialism?”:
https://www.gotquestions.org/dispensational-premillennialism.html
[20] Listen to his insightful 47-minute podcast with Chuck Carlson and Craig Hanson of We Hold These Truths: https://whtt.podbean.com/e/what-made-pastor-dr-chuck-baldwin-reject-christian-zionism/
[21] See definition of “The Messiah,” Jewish Virtual Library.
[22] Bernard McGinn, “Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil”, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
[23] See: James Lasher, “Tucker Carlson Warns of Temple Mount Crisis — But Bible Prophecy Tells a Bigger Story”, Charisma Media, March 5th, 2026: https://mycharisma.com/culture/tucker-carlson-warns-of-temple-mount-crisis-but-bible-prophecy-tells-a-bigger-story/, and watch: Tucker Carlson, Video broadcast on Temple Mount and Iran war, March 2026. https://youtu.be/gHrFcBeB7Lw
[24] Gershom Gorenberg, “The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount”, Oxford University Press, 2000.
[25] Ussama Makdisi, “Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World”, University of California Press, 2019.
[26] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, address to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Emergency Summit, Riyadh, November 11, 2023. Quoted in multiple international press agencies.
[27] Mark Juergensmeyer, “Terror in the Mind of God”, University of California Press, 2017.
[28] Paul Boyer, “When Time Shall Be No More”, Harvard University Press, 1992.
[29] Reza Aslan, “How to Win a Cosmic War”: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror”, Random House, 2009.
[30] Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, “Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy”, The New York Times, January 6th, 2008.
[31] See: Allez Savoir, “George W. Bush et le code Ezechiel”, September 10th, 2007:
https://www.scribd.com/document/638595896/George-W-Bush-et-le-Code-Ezechiel
[32] Barack Obama, address to the Muslim world, Cairo University, June 4, 2009. Full text available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2009/06/04/president-obama-speech-cairo-university
[33] Amir Nour, “The Western Roots of ‘Middle-Eastern’ Terrorism”, Algerie Network, August 10th, 2017:
https://algerienetwork.com/blog/the-western-roots-of-middle-eastern-terrorism/