Iran, however, is not the only country framing the Iran war in religious terms. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is invoking God as being on the American side, while claiming that Iran is “hell-bent on prophetic Islamist delusions.”

When asked directly if he saw the war in religious terms, Hegseth basically said yes, preaching at length his own version of a militarized Christian doctrine.

PETE HEGSETH: The providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those troops. And we’re committed to this mission.

“That entire regime is led by radical clerics who don’t make geopolitical decisions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio adds. “They make decisions on the basis of theology, their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one that has to be taken very seriously.”

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In August 1996, Osama Bin Laden issued his own 11,500 word “fatwa” and declared holy war against US forces in the Arabian peninsula. “Your blood has been spilt in Palestine and Iraq, and the horrific image of the massacre in Qana in Lebanon are still fresh in people’s minds,” he said. The declaration followed the June 25th truck bomb attack at Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, where 19 US military personnel were killed and over 500 were injured.

That November, the still obscure bin Laden was interviewed and asked why there hadn’t yet been attacks in response. He replied, “If we wanted to carry out small operations, it would have been easy to do so after the statements, but the nature of the battle requires qualitative operations that affect the adversary, which obviously requires good preparation.”

Two years later, in February 1998, bin Laden issued a second fatwa, calling on Muslims to kill Americans anywhere in the world, a shift from focusing solely on Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. This fatwa inspired a new generation of fighters, including the generation that undertook the 9/11 attacks.