WASHINGTON: As he wages war on Iran, President Donald Trump was joined in the Oval Office by Christian pastors. Solemnly, some placed their hands on his shoulder or forearm.
They offered their blessings. In a war against a country led by Shia Muslim clerics, the United States—which has a constitutional separation between church and state—is also invoking religion, with some Trump officials casting it as almost a divine mission.
At the event for Holy Week, when Christians mark the last days of Jesus Christ before the resurrection on Easter, the Reverend Franklin Graham told Trump of the Bible’s Book of Esther in which he said “the Iranians”—a Persian king of contested historical accuracy—ordered the killing of all Jews.
“Today the Iranians, the wicked regime of this government, wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire. But you have raised up President Trump.
You’ve raised him up for such a time as this. And Father, we pray that you’ll give him victory,” said Graham, son of famed late evangelist Billy Graham.
Unmentioned, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, still revered by Iranians, was the first world leader to grant freedom to the Jews, liberating them from captivity in Babylon.
Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has shown no such compunctions. The former Fox News host in 2020 wrote a book called “American Crusade” in which he called for a “holy war” to rid America of the left. Among his tattoos are a Jerusalem Cross, a Crusader-era emblem embraced by the far-right, along with the Latin inscription “Deus Vult,” or “God wills it,” a motto for the Crusaders.
If there was any doubt on his views on Muslims, he also has a tattoo that reads “kafir,” or “infidel,” in Arabic.
Hegseth, who has vowed to rain down “death and destruction” on Iran, at a news conference called on Americans to pray “every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
