Christian Zionists Helped Stoke Trump’s Iran War
The Christian Zionist movement has long pushed for regime change in Iran. With allies in Donald Trump’s inner circle and its ideas seeping into the US military, it has played a key role in building support for the current war.
Christians United for Israel and the broader Christian Zionist movement have long been pushing for Iran regime change. (Michael Brochstein / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
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.
Since 2016, the group, which claims to be “one of the largest pro-Israel organizations worldwide,” has spent millions lobbying Congress on a plethora of causes related to penalizing the Iranian government and boosting Israel armament. It also boasts on its website that it helped pass bills providing Israel with military weapons and persuaded states to adopt laws opposing the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
What’s more, several people in Donald Trump’s inner circle have embraced elements of the movement, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Israeli Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
The White House, the Defense Department, and the US Embassy in Israel did not respond to requests for comment.
For Christian Zionist followers, the war with Iran isn’t just about Israel’s “right to defend itself,” said Mimi Kirk, director of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism, a watchdog group that tracks and seeks to counter the movement. According to Kirk, combating Iran is part of its ideological mission.
“Iran is the symbol of what’s against Israel and what needs to be destroyed,” Kirk told the Lever. “So the idea for Christian Zionists is that you have to clear the way for Israel to be strong. It gets put in this kind of geopolitical [category] for the US and Israel, but it also gets put into these religious terms to kind of rally the troops.”
Lobbyists for the Apocalypse
Much of the modern iteration of Christian Zionism stems from the Scofield Reference Bible, an early twenieth-century annotated version of the text by a protestant preacher named Cyrus Scofield.
The book calls for Christians to support the Jewish people, stating, “It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew — well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”
According to Kirk, 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.
“Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority platform was kind of a springboard for Christian Zionism,” Kirk said. “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.
This past year alone, Christians United for Israel spent more than $679,000 lobbying Congress on Iranian and Syrian sanctions, a bill that would penalize US citizens who boycott Israel, pro-Israel trade legislation, and other matters. The group has also reportedly invested between $50 million and $65 million in illegal Israeli settlements being built in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory.
Christians United for Israel did not respond to a request for comment.
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.
“We had a number of members of Congress here to pray,” Johnson said in a video from the site. “We pray for our nation and for peace in Jerusalem, for peace for Israel.”
When asked about visiting the site and if he considers himself a Christian Zionist, a spokesperson for Johnson directed the Lever to his “public record for his perspective and beliefs.”
“The Speaker has been very public about his Christian faith in countless settings over the years,” Taylor Haulsee, a spokesperson for Johnson, told the Lever via email.
“Potential Violations of Department of Defense Regulations”
In 2017, Hagee, at the invitation of Vice President Mike Pence, met with Trump in the Oval Office. At the time, Hagee was pushing the White House to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a controversial move because it would recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory. Trump officially moved the embassy to Jerusalem a year later.
While Hagee hasn’t met with the president during his second term, many in Trump’s close orbit are supporters of elements of the Christian Zionist movement.
While serving as Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Huckabee has pushed Christian Zionist–backed concepts. In a recent interview with conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, Huckabee, paraphrasing the Bible, said he would be fine if Israel took control of land stretching from the Euphrates River in Iraq and Syria to the Nile River in Egypt — a region that encompasses much of the Middle East.
This land, according to Genesis 15, was promised to Abraham’s descendants, who are considered the Jewish people. A core tenet of Christian Zionism is that the Jewish people must return to this land.
He later claimed it was a “tongue-in-cheek” comment, but more than a dozen Arab countries condemned his remarks.
“I think it was very telling that Huckabee said that, and he said it religiously,” Kirk said.
And long before overseeing Trump’s war in Iran, Hegseth espoused some Christian Zionist beliefs. In 2018, while he was a Fox News host, Hegseth called for the construction of the third temple in Jerusalem — a move that would almost certainly cause violence in the region. Hamas, the Palestinian militia group that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, said its October 7, 2023, terrorist attack was partially motivated by the third-temple movement.
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.
“Members of the United States Armed Forces swear an oath to support and defend our secular Constitution — not any specific religious doctrines.”