Holy wars and geopolitics — the dangerous convergence of faith and fire

For more than four decades the antagonism between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been one of the defining fault lines of global politics. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, hostility towards the US has been deeply embedded in the ideological identity of the Iranian state.

For its part, the US has long justified its regional posture in the Middle East through its strategic partnership with Israel, which functions — whether acknowledged openly or not — as a central pillar of US power in the region.

This confrontation has typically been framed, both in Western discourse and in parts of the Islamic world, through the language of a civilisational divide. When George W Bush referred to the invasion of Iraq as a “crusade”, the backlash was immediate. The word invoked an ancient and dangerous narrative: the idea that Western Christian civilisation and the Islamic world are inescapably bound by fate in an enduring historical conflict that will ultimately spell catastrophe for the worlds they occupy.

Yet, despite their eschatologies — the religious traditions concerning the ultimate fate of the world and the end of history — the notion of an inevitable clash between Christianity and Islam has always been historically shallow. Across long stretches of history — in Al Andalus for seven centuries, the Ottoman Empire for six centuries, and Jerusalem itself for over a millennium — Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side in complex societies where coexistence was often the norm rather than the exception.

These societies were not without inequalities in political and social status, nor were they free from tensions, periodic violence or external invasions. Jerusalem itself endured repeated assaults from both Christian and Muslim powers. But the historical record nevertheless shows long periods in which these communities shared political space, economic life and cultural exchange.

Islamic theology itself recognises the shared lineage between the Abrahamic faiths. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are collectively understood as traditions of the “People of the Book,” with Islam presenting itself as the completion of this prophetic tradition. In this sense, the theological divide between the Abrahamic faiths has never been as absolute as the political rhetoric of modern and historical geopolitics suggests.

But this familiar narrative — West versus Islam — has obscured a deeper and more consequential conflict within the Islamic world itself.

The conflict within Islam

For more than 14 centuries, the deepest division in Islam has not been between Islam and Christianity, but within Islam itself. The Sunni–Shia divide originates in the earliest crisis of succession following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. The question was simple in form but enormous in consequence: who possessed the legitimate authority to lead the religion of Islam after the Prophet’s death?

One group believed leadership should remain within the Prophet’s family, passing to his cousin and son-in-law, Ali. These followers became known as the Shiat Ali — the “party of Ali” — from which the term Shia derives. Others believed leadership should be determined through consensus among the Prophet’s companions and the wider community. Their position eventually formed what became known as Sunni Islam, referring to adherence to the Sunna, the established tradition of the Prophet.

What began as a political dispute soon evolved into deeper theological and institutional differences. Over centuries, Sunni Islam became the majority tradition across much of the Muslim world, while Shia Islam developed its own structures of religious authority, jurisprudence and spiritual leadership.

The division was hardened by early episodes of violence that became foundational to Shia historical memory, most notably the killing of Ali’s son, Husayn, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. For Shia Muslims, Karbala symbolises martyrdom, injustice and resistance against illegitimate rule. The story remains central to Shia religious identity to this day.

In more recent history, Iran itself has enforced religious exclusions against Sunni Muslims and other minorities within its borders, and has supported Shia militias in regional conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Syria. These conflicts have produced enormous bloodshed and deepened sectarian tensions across the region, and beyond it as far as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For long stretches of history, this divide did not produce constant warfare. Muslims of different traditions often lived together within the same empires and political systems. But the rivalry never disappeared entirely. It continued to shape alliances, rivalries and struggles for legitimacy throughout the Islamic world.

In the modern Middle East, this ancient fracture has taken on renewed geopolitical form. Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf states represent the most powerful centres of Sunni political authority. Iran, since the revolution of 1979, has positioned itself as the leading power in the Shia world.

The result is a regional contest that is not merely geopolitical. It is also about religious legitimacy; about who can claim to represent the authentic continuation of the Islamic tradition. This is a high-stakes contestation between the Sunni and Shia traditions. Yet this deeper struggle is often poorly understood in Western political discourse, which tends to interpret conflicts in the Middle East through the simpler lens of Western intervention versus Islamic resistance.

Iran is the most powerful Shia-majority state in the world, and since the revolution of 1979 it has increasingly presented itself as a champion of Shia communities across the Middle East. A war on Iran therefore risks being interpreted by many Shia Muslims as a threat to the political heart of the Shiite world.

A dangerous shift

Hence, the emerging war with Iran represents a profound shift in this landscape. For decades, the US operated in the Middle East primarily as an external power aligned with Israel, and more recently, its various Arab partners. Its interventions — whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere — were often interpreted through the lens of Western power confronting the Islamic world.

But the present conflict alters that dynamic fundamentally. By directly confronting Iran and working in concert with Sunni Arab states, the US has moved from being an external actor to an active participant in the internal power struggle that has shaped Islam since its earliest days. In effect, the US has crossed a threshold. It is no longer merely an external force projecting power into the Middle East. It has now embedded itself within the central sectarian contestation that defines the deepest existential fracture in the Islamic world. That is a conflict from which the US will not be able to withdraw easily, even if it ceases its attacks on Iranian territory.

When geopolitics meets eschatology

Even more troubling are reports emerging from within the US military itself. According to a watchdog monitoring religious freedom in the armed forces, service members have filed hundreds of complaints alleging that some commanders have framed the war against Iran in explicitly Christian apocalyptic terms. Soldiers have reportedly been told that the conflict forms part of God’s “divine plan”, with references to Armageddon and the return of Christ appearing in military briefings.

In recent years, certain US political figures have expressed strong support for maximalist interpretations of Israeli territorial eschatology associated with the idea of a “Greater Israel”. Elements of these beliefs now appear increasingly visible within parts of the Trump administration’s political orbit.

Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, openly views Islam — and leftists, incidentally — as an existential threat to the US. Indeed, his 2020 book titled American Crusade is unapologetic about these views, a theme that runs throughout his other writings. He sports several Christian nationalist tattoos and the crusader motto “deus vult” on his arm. Translated, it means “God wills it”, the battle cry for the First Crusade. Speaker Mike Johnson went even deeper, directing his comments at Shia Islam itself by stating that Iranians followed a “misguided religion”.

These signals point to a deeply troubling convergence in the US: a convergence of eschatological beliefs long resident within religious life but largely absent from the realm of politics, into US political life itself.

Moreover, the danger here is not limited to one side of the conflict. Apocalyptic interpretations of political events exist across multiple traditions within the Abrahamic religious world. Certain strands of Christian nationalism in the US — as well as evangelical movements around the world — interpret upheaval in the Middle East as a precursor to the biblical end times.

Some radical Islamist movements frame contemporary conflicts as part of an unfolding cosmic struggle that precedes the final triumph of Islam. Even within Jewish religious thought, strands of messianic expectation attach deep prophetic significance to the political destiny of Israel and the biblical geography of the Holy Land, as framed in the aspirations towards establishing a Greater Israel.

None of these traditions is monolithic, and most believers interpret their scriptures in far less literal or politically instrumental ways. But when political actors begin to interpret contemporary conflicts through the lens of sacred prophecy, geopolitics risks becoming entangled with theological destiny. When prophecy becomes entangled with state power, the temptation arises not merely to interpret events as fulfilling sacred destiny — but to actively participate in bringing that destiny about.

What begins to emerge, in other words, is a convergence of eschatological imaginaries among the “People of the Book” themselves: Christian, Islamic and Jewish visions of history’s ultimate culmination all attaching symbolic significance to the same region, the same conflicts and the same political events. That convergence carries profound risks.

If such currents are indeed influencing the thinking of political or military actors, the implications are deeply troubling. For conflicts driven by conventional geopolitical interests can eventually end. Borders can be renegotiated, governments replaced, alliances recalibrated. But conflicts framed in civilisational or sacred terms are far harder to resolve. When actors believe they are participating in a divine historical drama, compromise begins to look like betrayal. At that point, belief itself can begin to reshape political behaviour; prophecy risks becoming self-fulfilling.

A conflict that cannot easily be escaped

Whether Washington intended it or not, the US has now stepped into the most enduring and sensitive fracture within the Islamic world. And that step cannot easily be undone.

US leaders may imagine that they retain the freedom to escalate or withdraw according to the shifting calculations of domestic politics. A president might attempt to declare victory tomorrow and move on. But conflicts of this nature are not governed solely by the intentions of those who initiate them. They are shaped by how they are understood by those who experience them.

For decades, the Iranian revolutionary state has cast the US as “the Great Satan” — the ultimate external enemy of Islam. Until now, that rhetoric resonated unevenly across the Muslim world, often filtered through regional politics and sectarian rivalries. But a direct war with Iran risks transforming that narrative into something far more powerful.

Once images of US power confronting an Islamic state circulate across the globe, they will likely not be interpreted solely through the lens of Sunni–Shia rivalry. They may also be absorbed into a wider narrative of Islam under siege — by the West and by Sunni Arab governments seen as its collaborators.

The US may believe it has chosen a tactical confrontation with Iran. But in the eyes of many across the Islamic world, it may now appear to have entered something far larger: a struggle touching the deepest historical and spiritual fault lines of the Muslim world. Once a conflict is framed in those terms, the possibility of a peaceful end to it recedes out of the imagination of its protagonists.

That may ultimately prove the most dangerous consequence of this war. By confronting Iran directly, Washington risks consolidating a broader resistance that transcends the very Sunni–Shia divisions that have historically prevented the Islamic world from acting as a unified geopolitical force.

Should that happen, historians may one day look back on this moment not simply as another Middle Eastern war, but as the point at which the US unwittingly helped transform Islam’s oldest internal fracture into a wider civilisational confrontation. DM

Camaren Peter (PhD) is an associate professor at the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. He is also the founder of the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change.