Apr 07, 2026 13:04 pm IST

Opinion | 'Holy' Orders? Why US Fighters Are Now Being Told Iran Is 'God's War'

Mahdi to Armageddon to Amalek to Jesus, how religion has hijacked the US-Iran war.

Syed Zubair Ahmed Syed Zubair Ahmed Columnist

Syed Zubair Ahmed Columnist

The daring rescue of a downed American airman deep inside Iran over the weekend was cast by the US President and his team in strikingly biblical terms. Donald Trump described it as an "Easter miracle", while officials noted the pilot transmitted the message "God is good" after activating his beacon. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth highlighted that the airman spent hours concealed in a cave before being rescued over Easter weekend - a comparison that invited an unmistakable parallel to resurrection imagery. Hegseth went further, urging Americans to pray for victory "in the name of Jesus Christ", while reports from within the ranks suggested that some personnel were told the conflict formed part of "God's plan". Religious references, once peripheral, are now moving closer to the centre of the rhetoric surrounding the war on Iran.

Against that backdrop, Trump's threat that he would "send Iran back to the Stone Age" reads less like conventional deterrence and more like civilisational language. Is it the language of modern diplomacy? It is the one that echoes eras when wars were framed as moral struggles between faiths. That mix of threat, moral superiority and religious symbolism is increasingly shaping the tone of the ongoing conflict.

Look beneath the missiles and bombs, and a familiar, older script begins to emerge. For the US, it carries echoes of 'evangelical' conviction and apocalyptic imagination. For Israel, it draws on Jewish history, scripture and destiny. For Iran, it has long been framed in the language of Islamic resistance, even 'jihad'. The common thread is their shared Abrahamic lineage and a history where theology and geopolitics have often intertwined.

Trump's War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, told Americans to take a knee and pray for victory "in the name of Jesus Christ"; a non-commissioned officer described being told the conflict is part of "God's plan" and that the President was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran". Already, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received over 200 complaints from active-duty personnel. 

I am often asked by my Hindu Indian friends why the followers of Middle Eastern religions seem perpetually locked in cycles of conflict. By Middle Eastern, they mean Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Together, they belong to the Abrahamic family. Why, they ask, do these societies slip so easily into the language of 'destiny', 'prophecy', 'jihad' and........

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