Deus Vult

It is March 2026, and the United States has started a war against Iran because God told them to.

Not metaphorically. Not in the “thoughts and prayers” way your aunt posts on Facebook after a school shooting. Literally. As in, commanders in the US Armed Forces are briefing troops that this war is part of God’s divine plan to bring about the return of Jesus Christ. At combat readiness briefings. With slides.

We spent last week watching very serious people debate whether this war is about Iran’s nuclear program or regime change. Turns out the winning team wasn’t part of that conversation. The winning team thinks this is a holy crusade to trigger the literal Apocalypse. And the winning team has the launch codes.

Thirty Democratic Congress members have asked the Department of Defense to investigate. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation says it’s been inundated with complaints from active service members. The Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office was filmed speaking in tongues and screaming. The President sat in the Oval Office while a circle of pastors laid hands on him like they were consecrating a warhead. And the Secretary of Defense has the battle cry of the First Crusade tattooed on his chest.

This is Applied Heresy. And today we’re talking about the thing nobody in the media wants to discuss. Which, as a rule of thumb, means it’s the only thing worth talking about.

If Iran’s Supreme Leader had been filmed surrounded by clerics chanting prophecy before launching missiles at Tel Aviv, every newspaper from New York to Berlin would call it what it is. A theocratic holy war led by religious fanatics. Hashtag #medieval would trend on X for two weeks, and CNN would commission a documentary series called The Mullahs of Madness.

But when it’s a man with a crusader tattoo and a Fox News severance package, we don’t call it a holy war. We call it national security.

I’m no geopolitical analyst. I once confused Tehran with Tbilisi. My qualification for talking about this is a Wi-Fi connection and a growing sense of dread. But the Secretary of Defense’s qualification was being a weekend Fox News host who got fired for showing up hungover on Veterans Day, so I figure I’m overqualified.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

The current United States Secretary of Defense gave a speech at the Western Wall in 2018. He listed what he called “miracles”: Balfour Declaration, Israeli independence, the Six-Day War, Trump declaring Jerusalem the capital. Four items. All real. And then he said on camera that

“There is no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible. I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen. But it could happen.”

The Temple Mount. Where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands. Islam’s third holiest site. He didn’t whisper this at a dinner party. He said it into a microphone. And then eight years later, we gave him the Pentagon.

Fast forward to now, and Tehran is getting hit at a scale that makes “surgical strikes” sound like a punchline from a kinder decade. Hegseth listed every bomber in the US fleet like a grocery list for the Apocalypse. His words:

“B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones.”

“Death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

“Playing for keeps! Never meant to be a fair fight. Punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be!”

His words. Geneva Convention? Offline today.

Now, I had to Google this because I thought the internet was making it up. Pete Hegseth has a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest. The symbol of the medieval Crusaders. On his arm, the Latin phrase Deus Vult. God Wills It. The battle cry of the First Crusade, 1095 AD.

So, quick recap. The man running the United States military has the Crusader logo on his body, the Crusader battle cry on his arm, a speech on camera calling for the Temple to be rebuilt on the Temple Mount, and is currently raining death and destruction from the sky on a Muslim country.

But sure. This is about the nuclear program.

Fun fact: There’s a White House FAITH Office now. And apparently I was the last to find out. Inside the executive mansion of a country that constitutionally separates church and state. Its Senior Advisor is Pastor Paula White-Cain. She was filmed speaking in tongues and screaming in the cadence of a Pentecostal exorcism. She invoked angels to assist the war effort. She stated on camera that

“To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”

You could call that an aberration. Two true believers who just happen to be at the top. A quirky management team. But then the Military Religious Freedom Foundation — an organization that exists specifically to keep religion out of the armed forces — reported being inundated with complaints from active service members. Complaints that commanders were briefing troops that the Iran war is part of God’s plan to bring about the return of Jesus Christ. Not at Bible study. At combat readiness briefings.

One active-duty NCO describes a commander who opened an ops readiness briefing by citing the Book of Revelation, told troops that Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon,” and had a big grin on his face the entire time.

So it’s not just the Secretary of Defense. It’s not just the White House faith advisor. It’s commanders telling soldiers they’re fighting Armageddon. The man with the Crusader tattoo is in charge of the world’s largest military, and he is having the time of his life.

The War of Religion

Obviously this can’t be only a war of religion. The oil is real. The geopolitics is real. The egos are very real. But at the center of this is a religious war. And nobody in the media dares say it out loud because it breaks the whole framework. Because the framework says: we are rational, they are fanatics. We have interests, they have beliefs. That’s been the basic deal in foreign policy since 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia was supposed to take God out of geopolitics for good. Lasted about as long as a ceasefire in the Middle East.

Israeli religious fundamentalists have no influence on Israeli foreign policy. They just happen to be in the government, singing about the Messiah before operations in Gaza, and building settlements that map suspiciously well onto a Bronze Age land grant from a deity most of the planet doesn’t subscribe to.

But of course. Non-proliferation.

And on the American side, Christian Zionist theology is fringe. Absolutely. It just happens to be the personal belief system of the Secretary of Defense. And a significant number of military commanders. And roughly forty million evangelicals who believe war in the Middle East is not a catastrophe but a schedule.

But here’s the problem. If the people making decisions genuinely believe this is a holy war, then you can’t deter them. Because deterrence requires the other side to value survival. You can’t negotiate with someone who thinks the negotiation table is a scenic overlook on the road to Armageddon. All the discussion about regime change and oil and China is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Except the captain is steering toward the iceberg on purpose, because he believes there’s a better world on the other side.

Now, for those thinking “well, at least the Christians and Jews are on the same team,” let me walk you through the terms and conditions.

Christian Zionists don’t support Israel because they love Jewish people. They support Israel because they need Jewish people to control Jerusalem, rebuild the Temple, and trigger the End Times. At which point the Christians ascend to heaven, and the Jews go to hell. They build the Temple, then receive eternal damnation as a thank-you note. It’s the worst outsourcing deal in the history of civilization.

Oh, and those Palestinian influencers are insisting that Israel has been digging tunnels underneath the Al-Aqsa mosque for years to undermine its structural integrity. But I’m sure that’s just propaganda. The same way you get ‘God Wills It’ in Latin tattooed on your arm because you liked the vintage font.

To rebuild the Third Temple, Christian Zionists only need three things:

1. Control of Jerusalem. Done since 1967. Reinforced by Trump in 2017.

2. A regional war they can frame as biblical. Currently in progress.

3. The destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Pending.

Three items. Two checked off, one to go. And that’s what Tucker Carlson, of all people, is now warning about. If these people are serious about the Third Temple, they need Al-Aqsa gone.

Here’s a pattern worth noticing. They already took out Ayatollah Khamenei, the second-highest religious authority in Shia Islam. Al-Aqsa is Islam’s third-holiest site. They’re working through the rankings like it’s a to-do list. I’d be curious what’s at number one.

But Europe will certainly stop this nonsense

Kaja Kallas blamed Iran for “spreading the war.” Because Iran struck back at the countries currently serving as launchpads for American bombers. And in the same breath, she pivoted to worrying about how the conflict might raise oil prices and fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Germany called it an effort to end Tehran’s “destructive game,” then linked it to Ukraine, because in European politics, everything is one Putin reference away from being justified. And then former chancellor candidate Armin Laschet went on primetime and declared that “international law does not apply to Iran.” Because Iran has been breaking international law for fifty years. Therefore it forfeits protection. He said this with the composure of someone ordering a schnitzel. It’s the legal equivalent of saying traffic laws don’t apply to you because you’ve been speeding.

And then Ursula von der Leyen, the continent’s emotional support chancellor, said there is “renewed hope for the oppressed people of Iran” and that Europe “strongly supports their right to determine their own future.” While the US bombs that future into gravel. Thank you, Ursula. Definitely about human rights.

But here’s something that got buried under the bombing footage

Three strikes happened in the same week. Iran denied all three.

March 1st: a drone hits the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus. Iran says it wasn’t them. March 4th: NATO intercepts a ballistic missile over Turkey. A NATO member, which means Article 5, which means the entire Western alliance is legally obligated to join the war. Iran says it wasn’t them. March 5th: a drone hits the airport in Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave drifting toward neutrality. Iran says it wasn’t them.

Three strikes. Three denials. And if you wanted to design an operation to drag NATO into a holy war, shut down every back channel, and eliminate every neutral party, it would look exactly like this.

I’ve been reading too much Revelation and not enough Reuters. But the dots are connecting themselves. And the shape they’re forming is a scenario nobody wants to name.

A missile. Iranian, during the fog of war. “Accidentally” hits Al-Aqsa. Israel blames Iran. The West backs the story. Nobody listens when Iran denies it, because nobody ever does. Al-Aqsa is rubble. And the Temple Mount is suddenly available for new management. We might be days away from testing that hypothesis. Hopefully wrong.

For decades, the United States has called Iran a theocratic regime. A country run by religious fanatics who can’t be trusted with power because they answer to God instead of reason. And now the United States is waging a holy war driven by Christian fundamentalists who want to conquer Jerusalem, destroy a mosque, rebuild an ancient temple, and trigger the literal end of the world.

At some point, a conspiracy theory stops being a theory and becomes a business plan. And the only question left is whether it was God’s plan or Pete Hegseth’s. And according to his tattoo, that might be the same thing.

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