Crusader-in-Chief: Pete Hegseth’s Christian Zionist Mission to Help Israel Confront Iran

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

This is how the war on Iran was framed to the men and women ordered to fight it.

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

This was not a sermon at a rural megachurch. It was a combat readiness briefing delivered on March 2, 2026, by a U.S. military commander to non-commissioned officers preparing for deployment to an active war zone, as first reported by journalist Jonathan Larsen. The officer informed his troops that the coming bloodshed was “all part of God’s divine plan” and that the violence must be sufficiently “graphic” and “bloody” to fulfil biblical prophecy. The commander openly called himself a “Christian First” supporter. With an extensive track record of pushing his faith on others, he made it clear to everyone under his command that he wanted them to share his beliefs.

Within 48 hours, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation had logged 110 similar complaints from service members across 40 units stationed on 30 military installations. In every branch of the armed forces, commanders are telling troops that the war with Iran is “biblically sanctioned,” that civilian casualties are liturgical necessities, and that their constitutional oath has been superseded by a religious mandate to trigger the End Times.

This is not a collection of rogue actors. This is the operational output of a systematic, decades-long infiltration of the U.S. military by a transnational alliance of Christian nationalist organisations, Israeli military academies, and intelligence training programs that have remade the American armed forces into an instrument of theological warfare.

The human cost of this “biblically sanctioned” campaign is already staggering. In the first three days of strikes, the Iranian Red Crescent reported at least 555 people killed, later rising above 780, including more than 165 schoolgirls and staff massacred at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab and teenagers blown apart at a girls’ gymnasium in Lamerd. Hospitals, residential towers, playgrounds, emergency‑services headquarters, media buildings and sports complexes have all been hit, often in so‑called “double‑tap” strikes that target first responders rushing to help the wounded. Observers like Trita Parsi and documentary filmmaker Robert Inlakesh, cited in a recent report by Common Dreams, describe the onslaught as “carpet‑bombing” and say Washington and Tel Aviv are “going Gaza on Iran,” importing the same tactics of mass civilian punishment that flattened whole neighbourhoods in the Palestinian Strip into a new theatre.

IMAGE: 165 graves being dug in Iran for the girls killed by US-Israel bombing at their school (Source: Iranian Foreign Media Department)

This pattern did not begin with the Iran war. In October 2023, following the Hamas attack on Israel, an Air Force commander told his unit that the conflict “has all been foretold by the Book of Revelation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and no one can do anything about that,” according to an MRFF complaint publicised in 2023. When six Christian airmen, one Jewish airman, and one atheist complained, the First Sergeant advised them to take their concerns to the commander rather than “an outside NGO.” The commander apologised for getting “a little carried away” while warning them never to contact outside advocates again.

The Human Cost of Holy War

Behind those 110 complaints are human beings whose service to their country has been converted into a theatre of religious coercion.

A Muslim female Marine, stationed stateside, still carries the trauma of her basic training. An NCO did more than just bully her, he tried to destroy her. “He wanted me to renounce my ‘fraudulent’ faith in front of our entire unit and accept Christ as my Lord and Saviour,” she wrote to MRFF. “He would scream at me that ‘the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.’” She survived, but not without scars. The military that promised to protect her had become a weapon against her.

A Jewish veteran seeking medical care at a VA hospital found the chaplaincy, the institution meant to provide spiritual comfort, turned into an instrument of harassment. “Beginning the first day I arrived at the facility, I was harassed about my faith,” he reported. “Over time, the harassment became worse with even the chaplain joining in and telling me I was going to hell.”

Jeremy Hall, an atheist specialist deployed to Iraq in 2007, refused to bow his head during a Thanksgiving prayer convened by Major Freddy Welborn. Welborn responded by chastising Hall for “contradicting what the founding fathers, who were Christians, envisioned for America,” then told him that as an atheist, he was incapable of having morals and unfit to serve. Threats began appearing on Hall’s Humvee: “If you don’t believe in God, you don’t belong in the military“, and “Believe or you will die.”

The commander who briefed his troops on March 2 told them their oath was not to the Constitution but to Jesus. He was wrong. The oath is “solely to the United States Constitution,” as Mikey Weinstein, the Air Force veteran who founded MRFF, notes. But he was also correct in a way, because the command structure above him had decided that biblical prophecy supersedes constitutional law.

The Crusader in the Pentagon

Pete Hegseth does not hide his ideology. He weaponises it. The Secretary of Defense carries a tattoo on his body that would have barred him from serving in the military he now commands: “Deus vult“, Latin for “God wills it,” the battle cry of the First Crusade, favoured by white supremacist groups including the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.

Hegseth’s worldview extends beyond generic Christian nationalism into explicit anti-Muslim militancy. He has declared that “Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government,” described Muslims as part of an “invading horde” conducting “cultural invasion,” and advocated for “American Crusaders” to wage “crusade” against what he calls the “Muslim hordes,” as documented in a deep profile by Current Affairs and in various analyses of his book American Crusade. During his own military service, he told his platoon to disregard rules of engagement, dismissing the Geneva Conventions as “tying America’s hands” and declaring of Allied atrocities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “They won. Who cares?”

Within months of taking office, Hegseth launched monthly Christian prayer services at the Pentagon during working hours, streamed on the department’s internal television network, as first reported by CNN. He invited his pastor, Brooks Potteiger of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, to deliver sermons declaring that “Jesus has the final say” over Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles. Potteiger’s church belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an archconservative network founded by Doug Wilson that explicitly rejects the 19th Amendment, bars women from voting in congregational matters, and declares that “it is neither lawful nor honourable for women to be mustered for combat service.”

In February 2026, Hegseth invited Doug Wilson, a self-described “Christian nationalist” and “paleo-Confederate”, who supports repealing women’s right to vote, argues that homosexuality should be criminalised,  and that Christian slaveholders were on “firm scriptural ground“, to preach at the Pentagon auditorium. The Department’s spokesperson defended the invitation, stating that Hegseth “greatly values many of Mr Wilson’s writings and teachings.“

IMAGE: Douglas Wilson, invited by Pete Hegseth, delivered a sermon sprinkled with military-themed jokes (Source: DOW Rapid Response|X)

But Hegseth’s theological infrastructure extends beyond the CREC. He is a participant in the White House Cabinet Bible Study led by Ralph Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries, which has been operating in Congress since 2010. Drollinger’s study group includes Hegseth and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, both recipients of pamphlets declaring that “Israel … executed the Messiah” and that Jewish rejection of Jesus “brings them back on the main track” toward conversion or damnation. Drollinger teaches that God’s “prophetic clock” requires Israel’s expansion before the End Times can commence, with the Jewish state serving as a temporary instrument on God’s “side track” until “grafting Israel back in” to the main track of salvation. This is the theological root of two millennia of anti‑Semitic violence, now being taught to the Secretary of Defence as he wages war on Iran.

The connection to the March 2 briefing is explicit, especially when commanders tell troops that Trump was “anointed” to trigger Armageddon. We must assume they are transmitting the ideology that their Secretary of Defense has institutionalised at the Pentagon.

The Machine: How the Infrastructure Produces Holy War

The 110 complaints from 40 units are not spontaneous eruptions of religious enthusiasm. They are the systematic output of a pipeline connecting Israeli military academies to U.S. commanders through institutionalised exchange programs and systematic indoctrination.

The Israeli Academy Pipeline

Bnei David Military Academy in the Eli settlement has produced over 3,500 graduates since 1988, with more than 40 percent becoming officers in the Israel Defense Forces, mostly in combat brigades and elite units. The academy, founded by Rabbi Eli Sadan, a leader of the religious Zionist settler movement, trains “men of faith in the world of action” who are taught to refuse orders conflicting with Halakha (Jewish law). Graduates of Bnei David and similar Hesder yeshiva now comprise a third of officers in Israeli combat units, transforming the IDF from a secular force into a religious army.

The JINSA Exchange

Since 1981, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) has operated a Generals and Admirals Program that has brought more than 500 retired U.S. service chiefs and combatant commanders to Israel for meetings with the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, IDF Chief of Staff, and Mossad Director. These officers return to the United States to “happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line,” as one critical analysis noted. In 2023, 44 retired generals signed a JINSA letter demanding weapons for Israel to “prevent a nuclear Iran“, the same theological objective now being briefed to active-duty troops as divine mandate.

JINSA’s U.S. Military Leaders Program, established in 2019, sends 30 elite active-duty officers, “highly selective” candidates on track to become generals, on eight-day trips to Israel to work with the IDF. These are the commanders who will lead the next generation of American forces. They are being trained by an Israeli military that is itself becoming theocratic.

Fort Huachuca: The Intelligence Nexus

Fort Huachuca, Arizona, is a US base where the Army trains its military intelligence operatives, and a well-documented hub for Christian nationalist activity before the current crisis. In April 2024, the base promoted a National Day of Prayer event using Christian Crusader imagery, a towering sword rising against a stylised red‑white‑blue sky, flanked by shield‑like panels bearing Christian royal symbols, on an official flyer inviting “all service members, families, civilians, retirees, and community members” to attend a “National Day of Prayer Walk.“

IMAGE: Fort Huachuca National Day of Prayer flyer showing sword‑and‑shield Christian nationalist artwork. (Source: Daily Kos / MRFF)

The flyer, based on National Day of Prayer Task Force artwork, was used to promote the Thursday, May 2 event and carried Fort Huachuca branding and chaplain contact information, making it unmistakably command‑endorsed. After 29 service members filed complaints through MRFF, the commanding general ordered the imagery removed within 24 hours, tacitly acknowledging that the use of overt Christian nationalist symbolism violated constitutional and regulatory boundaries.

Under Pete Hegseth, Fort Huachuca’s role has not been diminished; instead, it has been expanded and weaponised. In April 2025, a 109,651‑acre swath of land along the New Mexico border was redesignated as the New Mexico National Defense Area and legally folded into the Fort Huachuca installation by order of the Secretary of the Army at Trump’s direction. Hegseth personally travelled to this newly created zone, now administered as Fort Huachuca territory, where he posed with a bilingual warning sign and boasted that anyone crossing the line would be “detained” by U.S. forces as the Pentagon moved toward “100% operational control” of the border with a Stryker brigade and aviation units. The same Secretary who turned Fort Huachuca into a forward base for his domestic militarisation project presided over a command climate in which the installation openly promoted crusader‑style religious propaganda; this is not a coincidence, it is policy.

IMAGE: Pete Hegseth addressing soldiers in desert terrain near the newly created National Defense Area administered by Fort Huachuca, New Mexico. Source: (Army.mil / AP coverage of his 2025 border visit)

Claims have since emerged from whistleblowers alleging that the intelligence training conducted at Fort Huachuca includes instruction on infiltrating religious organisations and maintaining false religious identities to “undermine organisations from within.” While these specific claims remain unverified by mainstream sources, the base’s documented history of promoting crusader imagery and its central role in Hegseth’s border militarisation scheme make them contextually plausible. Fort Huachuca is not a random installation; it is a node where Christian nationalist symbolism, intelligence training, and Hegseth’s own public crusade visibly converge in defiance of the constitutional separation of church and state.

The Evangelical Pipeline

The Israeli government has cultivated American evangelical leaders with systematic precision. In December 2025, more than 1,000 U.S. Christian pastors and influencers travelled to Israel on a trip organised by Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Centre and museum,  a confidant of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The pastors were trained as “ambassadors” for Israel, receiving “state-level” access to Israeli officials, generals, and intelligence leaders to “firm up support for the government’s military actions.“

Netanyahu told a gathering of hundreds of evangelical leaders in 2023: “You are the greatest friends the Jewish state has… Without you, the State of Israel would not exist.” He was not speaking metaphorically. The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs has provided funding to Christian Zionist organisations, including a grant to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, while a firm called Show Faith by Works, conducting influence operations targeting young evangelicals, has received more than $3 million from the Israeli government since September 2025.

This is state-sponsored propaganda targeting American Christians, designed to create a domestic constituency that will support Israeli military objectives, including war with Iran, as theological imperatives.

CUFI: The Political Lobby

Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded by televangelist John Hagee in 2006, claims over 7 million members and has become the largest pro-Israel advocacy organisation in the United States. CUFI’s lobbying operation advanced the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, providing $14.3 billion in emergency military aid to Israel. Its annual Washington summits attract keynote speakers including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Ambassador Nikki Haley.

CUFI’s theological agenda is crystal clear. The organisation actively encourages Israel to engage militarily with Iran because it believes the Book of Ezekiel 38–39 prophesies that this conflict will “hasten the rapture of the church and the battle of Armageddon.” When commanders brief troops that the Iran war is “biblically sanctioned,” they are not improvising; they are repeating CUFI’s stated theological objectives almost verbatim.

The Synthesis

The machine operates with military precision. Israeli military academies (Bnei David) train officers in religious warfare; JINSA brings U.S. officers to Israel for indoctrination by these same religious‑military leaders; Fort Huachuca trains intelligence operatives in an environment already proven to promote Christian crusader ideology; Israeli-funded pastor programs (Evans’ 1,000 pastors) and CUFI’s 7 million members create a domestic political constituency demanding holy war; Hegseth’s Pentagon institutionalizes this theology through monthly prayer services and theocratic guest speakers; and commanders brief troops that killing Iranians fulfills biblical prophecy.

The March 2 briefing, where a commander told troops that Trump was “anointed” to “light the signal fire” for Armageddon, is not an aberration. It is the operational output of a systematic program to merge U.S. military culture with Christian Zionist theology.

The Law That Should Protect Them

There is no ambiguity about whether commanders may use their authority to promote religion. Military law is categorical. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, UCMJ Articles 133 and 134, prohibit conduct unbecoming of an officer and behaviour prejudicial to good order and discipline. Department of Defense Instruction 1300.17, “Religious Liberty in the Military Services”, explicitly forbids religious accommodation that comes at the expense of “good order and discipline, unit cohesion, or mission accomplishment.“

In Parker v. Levy (1974), the Supreme Court ruled that military necessity permits greater restrictions on speech than in civilian society, precisely to prevent the breakdown in unit cohesion that occurs when commanders impose ideological conformity. The Court held that the military is a “specialised society” where discipline takes precedence over individual liberty, and specifically curtailed First Amendment protections for service members to maintain that discipline.

Yet the commanders briefing troops on Armageddon are not being disciplined. They are being protected by a chain of command that has decided constitutional oaths are secondary to theological loyalty.

When Maj. Jamie Schwandt posted a YouTube video in 2022 (now removed) calling abortion “pro murder” and railing against transgender service members, he received only a Developmental Counselling Form, a bureaucratic wrist-slap that Weinstein correctly identified as “hardly punishment at all.” The military fears that harsh penalties will create martyrs. Instead, it has created a culture where commanders face no consequences for using combat briefings as revival tents.

The consequences extend beyond psychological trauma to career destruction. Weinstein has documented more than 150 cases where service members report that “names of those who attended religious services were being recorded” and that “promotions often depend on who you associate with in prayer.” One officer reported being denied three training opportunities requiring travel because of his religious exemption requests; another noted that despite equivalent qualifications, “I haven’t been made a platoon leader, and all my peers have.“

The result is institutionalised lawlessness. Weinstein warns that “it’s a short line from overt political and religious proselytising to extremism.” The military’s refusal to enforce its own regulations has transformed the armed forces into a theocratic organisation where non-Christian service members face career retaliation for failing to participate in Chritian Zionist religious rituals.

Oath Breakers

Every service member swears an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The Constitution they swear to protect says there shall be no religious test for office. It says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It enshrines freedom of conscience as a fundamental right.

The commanders briefing troops on Armageddon have broken that oath. They have replaced strategic analysis with eschatological prophecy. They have transformed the military from a secular institution defending a constitutional republic into a theocratic apparatus waging holy war. They have told Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and atheist service members that their service is conditional upon accepting a particular strain of evangelical theology, that their lives are less valuable than the theological convictions of their commanders.

The 110 service members who filed complaints in March 2026 understand what has happened to the military they joined. They serve in an institution where commanders use combat briefings to preach the End Times, where the chain of command has been replaced by an almost fanatical religious hierarchy, and where the blood of Iranian civilians is considered a small price to pay for triggering the return of Jesus Christ.

In other words, they serve not in the armed forces of a constitutional republic, but in the enforcement arm of a Christian nationalist movement that believes war is worship and that the Constitution is merely an obstacle to God’s will.

READ MORE: America’s ‘Israel First’ War: The Global Inferno Sparked by Washington’s Unconstitutional Ambush on Iran

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/03/04/crusader-in-chief-pete-hegseths-christian-zionist-mission-to-help-israel-confront-iran/