The growing divide between Pope Leo and many conservative Protestants over Iran, Israel, and war is about much more than politics. Underneath the disagreements are two very different ways of seeing human nature, evil, power, and history itself. Pope Leo tends to approach the world through the language of reconciliation, human solidarity, dialogue, and restraint. Many conservative Protestants approach the world through a far more tragic understanding of human nature, one shaped by sin, power, ambition, and the reality that some regimes and ideologies genuinely desire domination. The issue is not simply compassion versus aggression. The deeper issue is whether compassion by itself is enough to interpret the world accurately.

Leo’s worldview makes sense when you understand where it comes from. His thinking has been shaped deeply by Catholic social teaching, by Europe’s memory of nationalism and war, and by a desire to prevent the kinds of catastrophes that devastated the twentieth century. His language constantly returns to fraternity, encounter, dialogue, and the dignity of every human being. He sees diplomacy and reconciliation as morally serious responses to a fractured world. There is something admirable about that. In an age filled with outrage and ideological hatred, Leo often sounds like one of the few global leaders still trying to call people back to basic human decency.

At the same time, I think Leo has difficulty interpreting certain kinds of regimes and ideological movements. It is not that he is unaware of evil or unwilling to condemn it. He has spoken strongly against terrorism, antisemitism, extremism, and violence many times. But his broader instincts seem to rest on the belief that shared human dignity ultimately runs deeper than ideological or civilizational conflict.

In some situations, that approach can be deeply admirable and even effective. But it becomes much harder when dealing with revolutionary systems that do not see conflict as a tragic breakdown to overcome, but as something spiritually meaningful and historically necessary. In those cases, the belief that dialogue and reconciliation will eventually dissolve ideological hostility can start to feel less like wisdom and more like a serious misreading of the situation.\

That problem becomes especially clear when talking about Iran. A great deal of Western commentary treats Iran mainly as a nation reacting to sanctions, instability, Western intervention, or Israeli and American power. Those factors matter, but they do not explain the deeper structure of the Islamic Republic. Iran is not simply a normal nation-state with ordinary geopolitical interests. It is also a revolutionary theological state shaped by Twelver Shiʿi theology, martyrdom narratives, sacred resistance, and ideas tied to the Hidden Imam and revolutionary legitimacy. Theology is not some decorative layer sitting on top of politics in Iran. It is one of the things driving the political imagination of the regime itself.

The Islamic Republic does not think of itself as just another country pursuing normal political interests. The regime sees itself as part of a much bigger sacred and historical struggle involving legitimacy, resistance,........

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