After U.S. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the country's far-right Shiite fundamentalist leader since 1989 — was killed, a long list of other countries were drawn into the conflict. Iran launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. installations in Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iranian drones.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah (a pro-Iran Shiite militia in Lebanon) fired missiles at once another. From Riyadh to Beirut to Dubai, the Middle East is on pins and needles.

Trump is claiming that going to war with Iran is necessary from a national security standpoint. But MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem, in an opinion column published on March 4, argues that Trump's Christian nationalist allies view the conflict as a holy war for evangelical fundamentalist Christianity.

"President Donald Trump can't get his story straight on why he launched a war against Iran," Aleem argues. "But some commanders in the U.S. military are apparently telling service members that they're on a mission to fulfill biblical prophecy. The independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received more than 110 complaints from service members about their commanders' religious gloss on the war on Iran."

Aleem continues, "These complaints, according to Larsen's report, came from every branch of the military, across more than 40 different units, situated in at least 30 military installations…. MRFF President Michael Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints from service members shared a common feature: Commanders are describing the war as 'biblically sanctioned' and 'clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian End Times as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation."

Weinstein told Larsen, "Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology."

When military commanders "are reportedly selling American aggression on Iran as a holy war," Aleem warns, it is "deeply alarming."

"Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints violate the Constitution's separation of church and state," Aleem explains. "But regardless of its legality, telling American troops that they're fighting for a Christian god against a Muslim country is medieval madness. It isn't the role of the U.S., per the Constitution, to promote any religion over another. Furthermore, the reported remarks from these commanders is likely to prompt U.S. service members to dehumanize Iran's population, and help set the stage for viciousness in combat and human rights violations. The military is not supposed to be a crusading political-theological movement, but a professional defense force."

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