The Three Religious Reasons Iranian Leadership Hates Israel
One year ago today, rumors of impending Middle East conflict became actual war.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, launched a missile and terrorist blitzkrieg against Israel. Since then, the Israelis have been almost constantly battling with Hamas, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and, farther afield, the Houthis of Yemen. (The three of which I now designate the “H-bombers.”) Thousands of Israelis, as well as tens of thousands of Palestinians, have died in this conflict. (Major media, following Hamas’ figures, claim more than 41,000 of the latter. My U.S. intelligence community sources say that number is accurate.)
But what country is funding and arming all three of those groups? The Islamic Republic of Iran.
I’ve written here previously on Iran’s support for Hamas, as well as for Hezbollah and the Houthis. I’ve also touched on Tehran’s recent geopolitical motivations. Here, however, I want to focus more on the deeper reasons why the Iranian regime is so hell-bent on demolishing the Jewish state.
Pay Lots of Attention to the Ayatollahs No Longer Behind the Curtain
For more than three decades, hardline Shi`i Iran opposed the “Zionist entity” via such proxies. But in April 2022, it cast aside the curtain and struck Israel directly with missiles and drones. And last week, (October 1), Iran launched another massive missile and drone fusillade Against Israel.
Both attacks were full of sound and fury, but did little harm to the Israelis. Both, said Tehran, were retaliatory: The first was for Israel bombing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Damascus; the second was a response to Tel Aviv taking out Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas, as well as Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader. No Arab state has attacked Israel overtly since Saddam Hussein launched Scuds westward in 1991.
As for behind-the-scenes Arab support, there’s very little for the H-bombers. Qatar funds Hamas, Syria the Houthis, and Syria and Iraq, to some extent, Hezbollah.
Why, then, is Persian Shi`i Iran doing what bordering Arab Sunni states won’t — taking on Israel both indirectly and directly?
Yes, Virgina, Islam IS Anti-Jewish
First, realize that antipathy for Jews is deeply ingrained in Islam. It’s not something that just cropped up in the twentieth century, via the Nazis and/or anger over the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, as many believe. (Which is why I reject the misleading term “Islamofascism.”) This applies to both Sunnis and Shi`is.
The Quran contains many verses cursing and condemning Jews. There are also dozens of hadiths (sayings attributed to Islam’s founder, Muhammad) vilifying them. One specifically Shi`i hadith states that the Dajjal (the “Deceiver,” or false messiah, in Islam) will have as followers “70,000 Jews.” Some modern Muslim exegetes say this means the Dajjal himself will be Jewish.
Also, formative Islamic history contains a seminal anti-Jewish event. In 627 AD, Islam’s prophet ordered hundreds of Jews in Medina killed for allegedly plotting against him. Down to this day, Muslims wishing to justify violence against Jews have adduced this massacre, with its prophetic imprimatur in doing so.
Iranian Regime Also Hates Another Religious Group Linked to Israel
Many, if not most, ayatollahs (the highest rank of Twelver Shi`i clerics) as well as lower-ranking hujjatollahs have believed this about the Jews for generations. But they didn’t run the government in Persia/Iran.
That changed in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the reins of power from the formerly secular regime of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (which was allied with Israel and the US). Khomeini established a theocracy there, and one of its pillars was hatred of Jews and Israel, on a religious level.
But Khomeini and his epigones drummed up another reason to detest “the Zionist entity”: the Bahá’ís, who revere Bahá’u’lláh (d. 1892) as the messiah of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam combined. Since this belief undermines the role of, and faith in, the vanished 12th Imam who will return as the eschatological Mahdi (“divinely guided one”) — the core doctrine of Iranian Shi`ism — adherents of it have been severely persecuted in Iran, especially since 1979.
What does this have to do with Israel?
Bahá’u’lláh was banished from Qajar Iran and took refuge in the Ottoman Empire, eventually imprisoned in Haifa. Haifa, now a major city in northern Israel, became the world headquarters of the Bahá’í faith, centered around his tomb. The Shah’s government, before that, had sometimes persecuted the Bahá’ís as “agents of Zionism,” but the Islamic Republic further condemns them as heretics. The ayatollah-ate maintains that Mossad uses them to infiltrate and undermine Iranian society, giving Tehran another rationale to destroy Israel and the Bahá’í saboteurs it harbors.
This Is the End, My Zionist Friends—According to Iran
Finally, at least some of the Iranian leadership believes not just that Jews are the bad guys (and gals) of ancient Islam history and the pages of the Quran, but that — as Islam scholar David Cook has noted — they are the metahistorical enemy, always stage-managing events behind the scenes to Islam’s detriment. (Christians, with their many militarily powerful states across space and time, are merely the major historical foe.)
Islamic eschatology resembles that of Christianity (and was almost certainly cribbed from it), with some major changes: Jesus returns as an Islamic prophet, not the resurrected Second Person of the Trinity, and while he is predicted to kill the Dajjal (in Jerusalem), he plays second fiddle to the warlord Mahdi, who performs the main goal: establishing a global caliphate over which he will rule.
Both Sunni and Shi`i Islam posit the Mahdi (based on hadiths), but belief in him has become a staple only of the latter branch of Islam and the core plank of the IRI’s political platform. But some firebrand ayatollahs take it a step further: “annihilation of the Zionist regime is one of the preconditions for the arrival of the Messiah.” This is known in apocalyptic analyst circles as “hotwiring the apocalypse.”
It’s not a stretch to imagine that should Iran develop nuclear weapons, the leadership would contemplate using them on Israel in order to spark the return of the 12th Imam al-Mahdi. I don’t think that’s the case, because the IRI’s rulers are too fond of their expensive cars, watches, and multiple wives to risk being incinerated by retaliatory Jewish nukes. Long beards may indicate fanaticism, but not stupidity. Thus I think the ayatollahs want such weapons for regime insurance, preventing anyone from destroying them, instead of sparking conflagration to release the 12th Imam from his 12 centuries of concealment. But then again, I don’t live in range of Iranian missiles. At least not yet.
There you have it: three major theological reasons the current Iranian rulers loathe Israel. There are political and geopolitical ones as well, which I noted (and linked) above. Those are often covered by analysts and the media, however. This multi-pronged religious rationale is not. And it’s arguably the major motivation driving Iran’s quest to wipe Israel from the map.
Americans, especially conservative Christians who are Israel’s major supporters, need to be apprised of it.
Timothy Furnish has a PhD from Ohio State in Islamic, World & African history. He’s been an Arabic interrogator in the 101st Airborne, a US Special Operations Command analyst, an author and professor. Furnish is the military/security affairs writer for The Stream.