Whatever the ayatollahs get, they deserve. But this cannot devolve into a religious war - P.S., it already has.

Iran’s fundamentalist leadership is evil. But if a “My god is better than your god” mentality is allowed to prevail, neither the world, nor any of the Abrahamic faiths, will be better off.

There is much that is not yet known about the current war between Israel and Iran - and there is much that can be debated about the wisdom of Israel’s preemptive attack.

I wish there were impeccable sources that could be trusted when it comes to assessing Iran’s breakout capacity. The integrity of American intelligence services has been severely degraded under current management (Tulsi Gabbard? C’mon! I’d sooner believe Colin Powell calling out from the grave!) and the Israeli government can’t be trusted on this one either. Netanyahu has used up two lifetimes of political capital. Israeli military intelligence has been spot-on since October 7, but that’s like saying US intelligence did a great job… after Pearl Harbor.

So given our lack of assurance - which has the words “weapons of mass destruction” echoing in my ears, I choose to believe that the Iranians are, uh, were, in fact very close to having a bomb. It’s Pascal’s Wager, but with nukes. Whether or not they were close, they aren’t nearly as close now, but they want one even more. Meanwhile, the Great and Little Satans are knee-deep in this thing, so Israel and America need to work toward ending it a soon as possible with the most positive result, which must include a severely weakened Iran nowhere near breakout.

While I have had many concerns about both the Israeli and America leadership (as any regular reader of this Substack knows), I think it is important here to look at the big picture and focus on Iran and what its demise could mean for the world and what damage it was prepared to continue to do.

For whatever you might think about any of the other players here, the world will be a better place without the Ayatollah’s legions in charge of a good chunk of the Middle East, if that can be achieved.

The Ayatollan reign of terror started with 52 hostages in Tehran and it could well end with 53 hostages in Gaza. That symmetry points not to some divine plan, but rather to the cruelty of this regime, from start to finish.

At the same time, we must recognize that this is at its heart a religious war being led and fueled by the most extreme and malignant, fundamentalist visions of not just Islam, but Christianity and Judaism too. It doesn’t diminish the dangers of a nuclear Iran and the need to weaken it significantly, but we can’t ignore how the fundamentalism on all sides is fundamental to this conflict. It’s providing much of the fuel. So, Iran must come out of this thing weakened, but it cannot be portrayed as some sort of crusade. Let’s keep a wary eye on all parties here.

First, Iran. Lest we forget who we are dealing with…

The Ayatollan reign of terror started with abducting 52 hostages in Tehran and it could well end with 53 hostages being released from Gaza. That symmetry points not to some divine plan, but rather to the cruelty of this regime, from start to finish.

Iran gave the world a lesson in how to take the tools of modern warfare and care not a whit for innocent life, their eyes clouded by medieval visions of a vengeful, hand-chopping deity. They outsourced much of their grisly deeds but they all had Iranian fingerprints. Add the massacres of Assad in Syria and the handiwork of Hezbollah and of course Hamas. Every Hamas bus bombing had the return address of the Ayatollah on it.

• See Amnesty International 2024 report on human rights violations in Iran. And this was a quiet year! The summary below:

  

It’s impossible to estimate accurately how many people have been murdered by this regime since its inception, given how many became cannon fodder during the Iran-Iraq War (estimated at 1-2 million).

We can start with an estimated 60,000 killed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution alone.

A Fact Sheet: Protests in Iran 1979-2023 was updated regularly by the United States Institute of Peace, until the Trump Administration shut it down earlier this year. But where’s there’s a will there’s a way - the Wayback Machine of Internet Archive, that is - from which I was able to retrieve some key facts¹. Most recently, an Iranian general estimated that at least 500 Iranians were killed during the 2022 protests sparked by death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old who died three days after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran's dress code for women.

Mahsa Amini

The regime has carried out numerous assassinations, including the murder of 241 US Marines in Beirut in 1983. Terrorist activity abetted by this regime includes the 1994 bombing of the Argentina-Israelite Mutual Aid Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, that killed 85 individuals and wounded hundreds more.

Memorial to the marines murdered in Beirut. From Arlington Cemetery website

This regime has been inarguably the most nihilistic and destructive force in the world over the past half century, a death cult spawning hate wherever it chose to export its distorted, power-hungry version of Shiite Islam.

And naturally for any death cult, it couldn’t stomach the existence of a Jewish state in their midst and swore to destroy it from day one. Judaism cherishes life over death ²and peace³ over war - and so does mainstream Islam.

We knew it in 1979, a world without a radicalized Iran would be a safer place.

And that world may now be about to happen.

But it won’t be safer if one malignant messianism is superseded by another.

Messianism, again.

The impact of messianic magical thinking on large, now-empowered parts of the population in all three countries - Iran, Israel, and the U.S., is the most underreported aspect of this news story. Just today, we learned from The Atlantic that the murderer of Democratic politicians in Minnesota was completely motivated by Christian evangelical extremism.⁴

Trump’s thinking is that he’s doing the Lord’s work is as well. And we’ve seen in Gaza how when Israel is led by its most extreme messianists it breeds a Jewish supremacism (Kahanism) that won’t flinch at the thought of displacing an entire population of Others.

Iran’s fundamentalist leadership is evil and the world will be better if it is replaced. But if this “My god is better than your god” mentality is allowed to prevail, neither the world, nor any of the three Abrahamic faiths will be better off.

Iran is a theocracy. There are many in the governments of America and Israel who are working explicitly for them to become theocracies too. Not all theocracies are as brutal as Iran’s, but what we are seeing from Jewish and Christian supremacists right now can be downright brutal too.

This should be emphasized. There is nothing inherent in mainstream Christianity, Islam and Judaism - or Zionism, for that matter - that leads us inexorably to Kahanism, White Supremacism and the Ayatollah.⁵

I don’t ❤️ Mike Huckabee’s⁶ letter to Trump.⁷ The US Ambassador to Israel suggested that God has put Trump in a position to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat. Or is it to eliminate the regime? Unclear. Defeating Iran is part of the evangelical end-times agenda, because presumably it would lead to uncontested Israeli regional hegemony and a subsequent mass immigration of Jews from around the world.

Pastor John Hagee explains that when Jewish people are present in Israel “the clock starts ticking” on the rapture. “What will come soon [is] the antichrist and his seven year empire that will be destroyed in the battle of Armageddon. Then Jesus Christ will set up his throne in the city of Jerusalem. He will establish a kingdom that will never end,” Hagee said.⁸

Right now, Hagee and Huckabee are licking their chops. It must be noted that this scenario doesn’t end well for Jews.

But Jews have their own mystical dreams right now as well. The Bible predicts a large nation to the north of Israel, identified in Ezekiel 38-39 as Magog, will attack her. Things will get hairy. But according to this end-times belief, God forges a big, apocalyptic victory, the Gentiles are subdued and the Messianic Era begins - with Jews in charge. It’s not a belief reflected in mainstream Judaism⁹, but don’t think it isn’t on the mind of far right Israelis right now. They are licking their chops right next to Hagee and Huckabee.

I’ve never been more nostalgic for the realpolitik of Henry Kissinger than right now, with the emphasis on keeping the politic real.

And so, you ask, is it at all possible that this is God’s plan - either the one where the Jews all become Christians or where the Gentiles all disappear and the Jews win? Could God actually have chosen Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu? Is God guiding these uncanny events?

To which I say, if God is doing that, then God had no problem killing 1,200 innocents on October 7 to set off this chain reaction. Not to mention the rapes and hostages. And any God who would sit back while such suffering occurs, along with tens of thousands of innocents in Gaza and all the pain that Trump’s agenda has wrought - well, that is not a God I will ever pray to or claim to represent. That’s not my God.

I choose to believe in a God who weaves Her will much more subtly through Creation - through faiths that cherish life.¹⁰ In many ways, I see God as the life force that propels us forward when we are wounded, not the death ray that kills all nonbelievers.

Also, assigning these events to God allows way to little credit to go to those who deserve it much more; like the Mossad and IDF, for executing brilliant war plans designed to minimize collateral damage but maximize damage to the regime, a strategy that has worked at least much of the time in Iran, Lebanon and Syria, though not in densely populated Gaza.

If I could be allowed a moment to dream, here’s my best-case scenario for how this all goes down.

• With its military and nuclear capacities decimated, Iran’s population rises up and a new democratic revolution occurs.

• “Day after” plans for representative, stable, secular government crystallize in Lebanon and Syria.

• Hamas leadership, now completely isolated, throws in the towel and agrees to free the hostages for safe passage out of Gaza.

• The US in conjunction with Abraham Accord partners and the Saudis, come up with a legitimate plan to govern, secure and rebuild Gaza, with enough carrots for Israel (Saudi recognition plus Syria and Lebanon jumping on the Abraham train) to make it an offer Bibi can’t refuse.

• Bibi refuses - bringing about elections, which he wants anyway, thinking he’s become Churchill.

• Like Churchill after WW2, Bibi underestimates the deep hunger for change and loses, and a very different government takes up residence in the Knesset - right of center, still, but big on unity and minority rights and willing to set aside messianic aspirations.

• Russia, minus its Iranian partner-in-crime-against-humanity and already severely weakened in Syria, can no longer sustain its bombardment of Ukraine and the economic strain of losing Iran as a trading partner and drone supplier.

• Trump senses a Nobel (which he still doesn’t win), enough to fend off his messianists like Huckabee and Hagee and suddenly he is disgusted by Putin’s weakness, calling him a “dog who smells like a horse.”

• The GOP implodes as evangelicals combat isolationists while Trump refuses to take a side and falls asleep at every major meeting, and the Trump era ends.

Presto, a New Middle East. A better world. Plus, watching new episodes of Tehran without keeling over.

A guy can dream, can’t I?

The worst case scenario is not worth discussing right now. But it’s bad.¹¹ And the odds of anything remotely close to the best case happening are slim. But the odds of God bringing us Armageddon for His viewing pleasure are slimmer.

Let’s pray the crazies are wrong.

1. Here’s a sampling. Click on the archived site for much more:

2. On the triumph of life

3. On peace over war

4. See The Minnesota suspect’s radical spiritual world (The Atlantic)

During his time at the school, Boelter would have been exposed to the beliefs that motivate these movement leaders. He would have been taught to see the world as a great spiritual battleground between God and Satan, and to consider himself a kind of spiritual warrior. He would have been told that actual demonic forces can take hold of culture, political leaders, and entire territories, and thwart God’s kingdom. He would have been exposed to versions of courses currently offered, such as one that explains how “the World is in an era of serious warfare” and how “the body of Christ must remember that Jesus has already won this war.” He may have heard the founder’s slogan that “every Christian should pray at least one violent prayer a day.”

5. If I said “Aya-tolla you that in 1979” would that get a chuckle out of Jimmy Carter somewhere up in heaven?

6. Horrible Dad Joke #2, so we can chuckle our way to the apocalypse. “I ❤️ Huckabees“ was a 2004 self described “eziatential comedy” following a pair of detectives (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) hired to investigate the meaning of the life of their clients (Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts). As the different investigations cross paths, their rival and nemesis (Isabelle Huppert) tries to drag their clients into her own views on the meaning of their lives.

7. The letter was released by the White House, in itself a sign that Trump considers it a divine signal to blow up at least those hard-to-reach nuclear facilities - or to end the Iranian regime itself.

Mr. President,

God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century—maybe ever. The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone elseYou have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice.

I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts.

No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945. I don’t reach out to persuade you. Only to encourage you.

I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.

You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave.

I will not abandon this post. Our flag will NOT come down! You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU!

It is my honor to serve you!

Mike Huckabee

8. Here’s how The Guardian presents the evangelical plan:

Broadly speaking, some evangelicals believe that Jewish people returning to Israel following the 1917 ​​Balfour Declaration, a British statement which called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, was key to end times, when God will purge sinners and Jesus Christ will return.

John Hagee, an evangelical pastor and influential founder of Christians United for Israel, explained the prophecy to TBN Networks in December 2022.

“God is getting ready to defend Israel in such a supernatural way it’s going to take the breath out of the lungs of the dictators on planet Earth but we are living on the cusp of the greatest most supernatural series of events the world has ever seen ready or not.”

Hagee said when Jewish people are present in Israel “the clock starts ticking” on the rapture.

“What will come soon [is] the antichrist and his seven year empire that will be destroyed in the battle of armageddon. Then Jesus Christ will set up his throne in the city of Jerusalem. He will establish a kingdom that will never end,” Hagee said.

9. For a mainstream Jewish view on messianism, which the rabbis felt was dangerous, see my post from last week, "No Kings" misses the point. Trump doesn't think he's king - he thinks he's God.

10. Some reflections on childless cat women, white-baby eugenics, Jewish "mitzvah babies," and developing an authentic culture of life (Rabbi Joshua Hammerman Substack)

11. Yesterday both Israel and Iran promised a “Big Surprise” for the other side coming last night. We’re around to talk about it today, so, not so much.