Document: Homeland Security Warns of Iranian “Fatwa”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

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The Department of Homeland Security is circulating a “critical incident note” warning that Iran has issued two “fatwas” for Muslims to avenge the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, orders that the department sees as predicting a terrorist strike on America.

The DHS report we obtained — titled “Iranian Religious Leaders Issue Fatwas Calling on Muslims to Avenge Supreme Leaders Death” — says the fatwas label the U.S. and Israel as “the most wicked enemies of humanity” and that it “urges followers worldwide to take revenge.”

On March 2, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also threatened the U.S. directly, issuing a proclamation that “the enemy … will no longer have security anywhere in the world, even in their own homes.”

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.”

Leaked DHS report

Leaders of the right-wing Christian community in America, meanwhile, have overtly tied the Iran war to end times theology.

Televangelist John Hagee and chairman of Christians United for Israel delivered a sermon at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio earlier this month, standing in front of a banner reading: “God’s coming…Operation ‘Epic Fury’.” In his sermon, he thanked Trump for having “crushed the enemies of Zion,” saying the attack on Iran will trigger biblically prophesied events including the invasion of Israel by a Russian-led army and Jesus’s defeat of the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon.

John Hagee delivers sermon at Cornerstone Church

The religious fervor has permeated much of the military as well.

The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation put out an alarming statement on March 3 saying such, and that the organization was “inundated with complaints of gleeful commanders telling troops [the] Iran War is ‘part of God’s divine plan’ to usher in the return of Jesus Christ.” The organization reported over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations reporting similar remarks from U.S. military commanders.

One said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to MRFF.

On Sunday, Hegseth told 60 Minutes correspondent Major Garrett that the “providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those troops” in the Iran war.

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.

MAJOR GARRETT: You made that reference to the providence of Almighty God. Is there any part of you, Mr. Secretary, that views any of this in a religious context?

HEGSETH:  I mean, obviously we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order to, for some religious harm. Again, but from my perspective, I mean obviously I’m a man of faith who encourages our troops to lean into their faith, rely on God. There’s no atheists in foxholes. Your mortality’s right in front of you.

I remember prayer for me on combat missions, how important that was. That’s why we’re making the Chaplain Corps great again and active again, making sure we’re pouring into the faith of our troops. My Christian faith, faith in general, is important to the president. It’s important in our fighting ranks to give him perspective, you know, on human nature. On their own humanity, on our own mortality.

And we lost a lot of that with sort of self-help, self-esteem nonsense, which is not what troops need. They need a connection with their almighty God in these moments. And I’m proud of how our troops are conducting themselves, and I pray for them every day.”

Perhaps this is not surprising for a figure like Hegseth who literally published a book in 2020 titled “American Crusade,” and has “DEUS VULT,” which he described as a Crusader battle cry, tattooed on his arm.

“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.”

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor (and pastor) Mike Huckabee also casts the war in deeply religious terms. In an interview with Tucker Carlson last month, Huckabee said that Israel has a religious right to much of the Middle East, remarking: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

“This is a religious war, and we will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Trump’s and the most vocal advocate for military action in Iran, said last week.

In February 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of British author Salman Rushdie for his book “The Satanic Verses.” Iran went on to cut off diplomatic relations with the UK over Rushdie’s book. We all know how that subsequently turned out.

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.

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— Edited by William M. Arkin

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