Christian Zionists Helped Stoke Trump’s Iran War
The morning after the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, began his globally broadcast Sunday sermon with a special note about the “brilliant execution of Operation Epic Fury.”
“It’s refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed,” he told his parishioners.
Hagee, too, is in control, and the war in Iran is part of his — and his lobbyists’ — plans.
As the founder of the ten-million-member group Christians United for Israel, Hagee is a leading voice in the Christian Zionist movement, a subset of Evangelicalism that calls for the return of Jewish people to the “Holy Land” of Israel to bring about the second coming of Jesus. For Hagee and his colleagues, that end-time prophecy runs through Iran.
And while much attention has focused on the Israel lobby’s efforts to draw the United States into war with Iran, Christians United for Israel and the broader Christian Zionist movement have also been pushing for Iran regime change.
Christian Zionist ideology became linked to politics in the late 1970s, when pastor Jerry Falwell began working with Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich to steer evangelical voters toward supporting the Republican Party.
Falwell, whose Moral Majority campaign helped elect President Ronald Reagan in 1980, made Israel a core tenet of his sermons, stating that “to stand against Israel is to stand against God,” and supported Israeli settlement expansion on Palestinian land in the 1980s. The Israeli government reportedly gifted Falwell a private jet for his efforts.
The evangelical political movement was in response to the movements for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights of the 1960s.
In 2006, Hagee founded Christians United for Israel, framing it as a “biblical advocacy” mission to “go to Washington and go face-to-face with senators, representing Israel.” Since 2016, the group has spent nearly $2.5 million lobbying Congress on matters including Iranian sanctions, the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, the BDS movement, and military spending, disclosures show.
One of the more controversial tenets of the Christian Zionist movement calls for the building of a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a sacred site for many religions that is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Once this so-called “third temple” is built, Christian Zionists believe Jews will return to the Holy Land and red heifers will be sacrificed, ushering in the apocalypse. During these end-times, Jews supposedly will either convert to Christianity or “be damned to hell.”
American ranchers have been breeding red heifers for just such a sacrifice. In August, Huckabee, a self-described Christian Zionist, and Johnson met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at an Israeli site holding the cows in the West Bank.
It’s not just politicians who have pushed Christian Zionist doctrine; the concepts are also seeping into the US military.
A military commander reportedly told lower-level officers to tell troops that the attack on Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan,” citing passages from the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the “imminent return of Jesus Christ,” according to a March 3 statement from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Other top commanders have reportedly issued similar messages, leading thirty members of Congress to urge the Defense Department’s inspector general on March 6 to investigate the claims.
“If accurate, these outrageous statements . . . raise not only glaring Constitutional concerns, but potential violations of Department of Defense regulations regarding religious neutrality and breaches of professional obligations and standards expected of military leadership,” the members wrote.
https://jacobin.com/2026/03/christian-zi...war-israel
The morning after the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, began his globally broadcast Sunday sermon with a special note about the “brilliant execution of Operation Epic Fury.”
“It’s refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed,” he told his parishioners.
Hagee, too, is in control, and the war in Iran is part of his — and his lobbyists’ — plans.
As the founder of the ten-million-member group Christians United for Israel, Hagee is a leading voice in the Christian Zionist movement, a subset of Evangelicalism that calls for the return of Jewish people to the “Holy Land” of Israel to bring about the second coming of Jesus. For Hagee and his colleagues, that end-time prophecy runs through Iran.
And while much attention has focused on the Israel lobby’s efforts to draw the United States into war with Iran, Christians United for Israel and the broader Christian Zionist movement have also been pushing for Iran regime change.
Christian Zionist ideology became linked to politics in the late 1970s, when pastor Jerry Falwell began working with Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich to steer evangelical voters toward supporting the Republican Party.
Falwell, whose Moral Majority campaign helped elect President Ronald Reagan in 1980, made Israel a core tenet of his sermons, stating that “to stand against Israel is to stand against God,” and supported Israeli settlement expansion on Palestinian land in the 1980s. The Israeli government reportedly gifted Falwell a private jet for his efforts.
The evangelical political movement was in response to the movements for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights of the 1960s.
In 2006, Hagee founded Christians United for Israel, framing it as a “biblical advocacy” mission to “go to Washington and go face-to-face with senators, representing Israel.” Since 2016, the group has spent nearly $2.5 million lobbying Congress on matters including Iranian sanctions, the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, the BDS movement, and military spending, disclosures show.
One of the more controversial tenets of the Christian Zionist movement calls for the building of a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a sacred site for many religions that is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Once this so-called “third temple” is built, Christian Zionists believe Jews will return to the Holy Land and red heifers will be sacrificed, ushering in the apocalypse. During these end-times, Jews supposedly will either convert to Christianity or “be damned to hell.”
American ranchers have been breeding red heifers for just such a sacrifice. In August, Huckabee, a self-described Christian Zionist, and Johnson met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at an Israeli site holding the cows in the West Bank.
It’s not just politicians who have pushed Christian Zionist doctrine; the concepts are also seeping into the US military.
A military commander reportedly told lower-level officers to tell troops that the attack on Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan,” citing passages from the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the “imminent return of Jesus Christ,” according to a March 3 statement from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Other top commanders have reportedly issued similar messages, leading thirty members of Congress to urge the Defense Department’s inspector general on March 6 to investigate the claims.
“If accurate, these outrageous statements . . . raise not only glaring Constitutional concerns, but potential violations of Department of Defense regulations regarding religious neutrality and breaches of professional obligations and standards expected of military leadership,” the members wrote.
https://jacobin.com/2026/03/christian-zi...war-israel
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
