The Middle East is burning once again. Beneath the same skies, in the same ancient cities, the same calls to death are hurled toward heaven. Yet in a supposedly secularized world, the actors of war and the media covering it insist on presenting it as political, territorial, or economic in nature. In reality, it is time to use the proper words for the current situation: this conflict is a war of religion.
Just as during the First Crusade in 1095, one phrase summarizes the commitment of the belligerents: “Deus lo volt” — God wills it. For decades now, and with renewed intensity since October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s attack against an Israel remarkably blind and deaf for the occasion, events have resembled almost exactly what historiography tells us about the crusades of the past. Faith justifies violence, the enemy becomes incarnate evil, and every death is portrayed as martyrdom by the camp concerned.
Today’s Templars may be Rangers or soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces facing members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the ideological mechanisms remain identical and have not evolved by a single inch.
On the side of the Iran, the Islamic Republic carries within its very structure a messianic construction. Twelver Shiism, the dominant branch of Islam in Iran, is founded on the belief in twelve Imams, the last of whom mysteriously disappeared in 874 AD. His return — that of the Mahdi — is awaited to restore justice on earth. Until that return, Ali Khamenei and the Ayatollahs exercise political power in the name of the absent Imam. Iran’s Constitution states this explicitly in Article 5: “During the occultation of the Master of Time, may God hasten his reappearance, governance belongs to the just and pious faqih.” From that point onward, war becomes a theological act, while death in battle for the cause becomes a shortcut to paradise.
In Israel, while leaders relentlessly invoke and pursue the specter of anti-Zionism, it has long been clear that the original foundations of Zionism no longer define the politics of the Jewish state. It is worth recalling that Zionism was originally a secular and nationalist movement. Theodor Herzl was a Viennese journalist, not a prophet, and David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the nation, was a socialist.
Today, it is a form of messianic religious nationalism — Gush Emunim, the “Bloc of the Faithful” — that increasingly guides political action. The rabbis have overtaken the secularists, and the Messiah is awaited under conditions that can only send chills down the spine. According to certain currents within Orthodox Jewish messianism, the coming of the Messiah is not merely conditioned upon the return of the Jewish people to their land. It must also be preceded by a period of maximal hatred and persecution by other nations against Israel, known as the “birth pangs of the Messiah,” or “Chevlei Mashiach.” In this reading, the hatred of the enemy is not a catastrophe to avoid; it is a painful necessity confirming the prophecy to come. Thus, where some see genocide, others interpret prophetic confirmation. Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition are driven by these profound convictions, and Palestine — from Gaza to the West Bank, as well as southern Lebanon — stands as evidence of it.
Finally, what is perhaps most neglected is the third actor in this deadly religious triangle: American Christian Zionism. In the United States, historic strategic support for Israel has been reinforced by the growing weight of the evangelical movement, which counts millions of followers and for whom, once again, the return of Christ can only occur if biblical prophecies are fulfilled. According to evangelical interpretations, Jesus cannot return until the Temple of Jerusalem has been restored — on the current Temple Mount, home to the Al-Aqsa compound — and Israel controls the entirety of the Holy Land. This clearly helps explain Benjamin Netanyahu’s numerous visits to the United States since the beginning of Donald Trump’s term, as well as the recent statements by Marco Rubio explaining that the White House “was dragged into this war.”
For all these actors — from Tehran to Tel Aviv, passing through Washington — the horsemen of the Apocalypse are approaching. And it is civilian populations who are seeing the horses head-on.
Zouhair Yata
