Lacking a clear justification for the attack on Iran, Trumpists increasingly speak like crusaders.
Screenshot from White House video showing pastors praying for Donald Trump in the Oval Office on March 5, 2026.
(Dan Scavino/X) Donald Trump has often congratulated William McKinleya White House predecessor who shared the current president’s love of tariffs and territorial expansion. A pious man, McKinley claimed that he received divine sanction for the United States’ annexation of the Philippines in 1898, following the Spanish-American War. According to McKinley’s accounthe was tormented by what to do with the former Spanish colonies when he “fell on his knees and prayed to God Almighty for light and direction.” He was then struck by a divine idea: the United States’ mission was to “educate the Filipinos, to uplift them, to civilize them and to Christianize them.”
It is impossible to imagine Trump, for all his professed admiration for McKinley, dropping to his knees and seeking heavenly counsel. While Trump leads a political coalition whose largest element is evangelical Christians, his own personal faith seems, at best, a cynical and thinly disguised performance. In 2015, at the start of his political career, he said he had never asked God for forgiveness. When asked whether he preferred the Old or New Testament, he replied: “Probably equal. I think it’s just amazing.”
Yet, curiously, Trump has managed to reinvent McKinley’s fusion of imperialism and piety – and never more so than in his current war against Iran. There was only a superficial effort to prepare the public for the conflict; as The New Yorker acidulous observedit is a “war without explanation”. Since negotiations began last Saturday, the White House has advanced a plethora of conflicting justifications, including regime change, pressure from the Israeli government, fear of an imminent attack by Iran, fear of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, and a desire to pressure Iran in negotiations.
This confusing kaleidoscope of excuses has created an opportunity for the religious right to reshape the war in its own image. Since there is no consistent, agreed upon topic of discussion in the White House, the MAGA movement is free to explain the war with its own pet theories.
Like my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann sharp last year, during the so-called Twelve Day War between Israel and Iran, Pentecostal pastors such as John Hagee are quick to exploit any unrest in the Middle East as evidence that the long-promised Apocalypse is near, a consummation devoutly desired as the fulfillment of God’s plan, even if it means the end of the world.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who calls himself “Secretary of War,” this apocalyptic Christianity is sanctioned from the heights of the Pentagon. In an article from Substack, journalist Jonathan Larsen reports,
Hegseth enshrined evangelical Christianity at the highest levels of the U.S. military, broadcasting monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon. Last year, the Pentagon confirmed for me, Hegseth attends a weekly Bible study at the White House. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.
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Citing complaints filed with the Military Foundation for Religious Freedom (MRFF), Larsen provided startling evidence that Hegseth’s theocratic militarism now saturates the military. On Monday, a commander reportedly told troops that Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to bring about Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” The MRFF says it has received at least 110 similar complaints from more than 40 units.
These military commanders echo language omnipresent in politics, particularly in the past week. On Thursday, Senator Lindsey Graham said“This is a religious war, and we will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years.” House Speaker Mike Johnson asserts that Iranians have a “wrong religion”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio complaints that the war is necessary because Iran is “run by madmen – crazy religious fanatics.” At a press conference, Hegseth said“Crazy regimes like Iran, hell-bent on Islamic prophetic illusions, cannot have nuclear weapons. » The White House intervened Thursday, post images from the Oval Office of a group of evangelical pastors putting their hands on Trump and praying for his success in the war.
This language of religious abuse is shared by the leaders of Israel, the United States’ main ally in the conflict. Benjamin Netanyahu has compared Iran to the Amalekites, a biblical people associated with pure evil that God commands the Israelites to completely annihilate.
There is, of course, a long history of using apocalyptic religious language in times of war. Armies like to think that they fight not only with weapons, but also with the support of God. Religious language provides an illusory moral clarity that helps justify violence.
Ibrahim Abusharif, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, said Al Jazeera that the religious framework “carries risks: once a war is framed in sacred language, political compromise becomes more difficult, expectations become higher, and the overall perception of the conflict can change in ways that complicate diplomacy.”
Even George W. Bush, hardly a model of diplomatic tact, was able to understand, with a little tutoring, the danger of apocalyptic language. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he spoke of the need for a “crusade.” When it was explained to Bush that mentioning the Crusades would be tantamount to making Muslims believe that he wanted to wage a holy war of conquest, he refrained from using the word again.
One way to describe Trump’s attack on Iran is that it is Bush’s bellicose foreign policy carried out without even a modicum of diplomatic effort or persuasion skills. Noting the rise of religious language among American politicians, Vali Nasr, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, argues“It may be an act of desperation to explain to the Americans a war plan gone wrong, but all the more [the] The United States presents this as a holy war and a new crusade, especially as it makes it a regional conflict, angering Muslims well beyond the region. » This is the real danger: that Trumpist rhetoric of a holy war could convince the broader Islamic world that the Christian West is the enemy. If this happens, what is already a vast regional conflict will truly spiral out of control and lead to a new era of global conflict.
Support independent journalism that breaks the rules Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding popularity couldn’t have been clearer: rampant corruption and billions of dollars’ worth of personal enrichment during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided solely by his own abandoned sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Today, an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire across the region and Europe. A new “forever war” – with an ever-increasing likelihood of US troops on the ground – could very well be upon us.
As we have seen time and time again, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory justifications for attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are threatened by non-citizens registered to vote. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
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Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.
