The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In April of 2024, Iran launched a series of unprecedented drone and missile strikes against Israel, raising the specter of a war that could incinerate large parts of the Middle East, collapse the global economy and eventually involve the United States and other major powers.  For now both Israel and Iran have avoided further escalation but no one really believes that this will last.  Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speculates that “As long as Iran is ruled by an Islamist government that puts its revolutionary ideology before the national interest, the two countries will never know peace, and the Middle East will never know meaningful stability.”

Iran and Israel are not natural adversaries. Iran and Israel have no bilateral land or resource disputes. In fact, both nations have a historical affinity dating back over 2,500 years, when the Persian King Cyrus the Great in 539 BC freed the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, permitting them to rebuild their Temple and the city of Jerusalem.  Furthermore, Iran was the second Muslim nation, after Turkey, to recognize Israel after its founding in 1948.

Correctly, Sadjadpour observes that “[Iran’s] modern animosity is best understood through the lens of ideology, not geopolitics. It began with the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dogmatic Shiite cleric who led the 1979 revolution that transformed Iran from a U.S.-allied monarchy into an anti-American theocracy. Khomeini’s 1970 treatise ‘Islamic Government,’ which became the basis of the constitution that governs the Islamic Republic, is laced with tirades and threats against ‘wretched’ and ‘satanic’ Jews. Then, as now, antisemitism often lurked below the surface of anti-imperialism.”  Sadjadpour continues:

• “We must protest and make the people aware that the Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world,” Khomeini wrote. “Since they are a cunning and resourceful group of people, I fear that — God forbid — they may one day achieve their goal and that the apathy shown by some of us may allow a Jew to rule over us one day.”
• In the same manifesto, Khomeini casually advocates what in modern parlance is best understood as ethnic cleansing. “Islam,” he wrote, “has rooted out numerous groups that were a source of corruption and harm to human society.” He went on to cite the case of a “troublesome” Jewish tribe in Medina that he said was “eliminated” by the Prophet Muhammad.  Once in power, he built his newfound theocracy on three ideological pillars: death to America, death to Israel and the subjugation of women.
• Over four decades later, the worldview of Iran’s current rulers has evolved little. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s 85-year-old successor and now one of the world’s longest-serving dictators, denounces Zionism in virtually every speech and was one of the few world leaders to publicly praise Hamas’s “epic” Oct. 7 attack on Israel. “We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in 2020, “who opposes and fights the Zionist regime.”  As Ayatollah Khamenei’s words make plain, the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the few governments in the world more dedicated to abolishing another nation than advancing its own. “Death to Israel” is the regime’s rallying cry — not “Long live Iran.”
• “Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime has backed this language with action. Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars arming, training and financing proxy militias in five failing nations: Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen. Together these groups constitute its so-called Axis of Resistance against America and Israel. These groups are elbow-deep in corruption and repression in their own societies, including illicit drug dealing and piracy, while pledging that they seek justice for Palestinians.”
• “Hostility toward Israel is a useful tool for predominantly Shiite, Persian Iran to vie for leadership in the predominantly Sunni, Arab Middle East. But it should not be confused with concern for the well-being of Palestinians. In contrast to American, European and Arab governments that fund Palestinian human welfare initiatives, Iran has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arming and financing Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran’s goal is not to build a Palestine but to demolish Israel.”

Two additional comments about the Middle East:

• In early June 2024, Israel rescued four of its hostages, who were hidden by Hamas in two civilian buildings near Gaza’s Nuseirat market.  It was an amazing rescue—

reminiscent of the 1976 raid to free Israeli hostages in Entebbe, Uganda.  But UN officials and the European Union foreign-policy chief quickly condemned the operation “in the strongest terms.”  These leaders quickly forget that, in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Hamas started the war with a massacre, took these hostages and hid them in a crowded civilian area.  Then, when Israel came to free them, Hamas responded with heavy fire, including RPGs—yet people are condemning Israel.  It makes us wonder if the West has lost the moral discernment and instinct for self-preservation needed to defend itself in a world of killers.  Hamas could not survive if not for its enablers around the world.”

• In late May 2024, the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for warrants based on war-crimes allegations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.  As Eugene Kontorovich, professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a scholar at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, argues, “The prosecutor’s decision to issue warrants was based in part on the advice of several consultants he had handpicked. Many of them already had a longstanding bias against the Jewish state; they’ve been publicly condemning Israel and declaring it guilty of war crimes for years. By picking experts who had taken clear positions on the questions they were being asked to consider, Mr. Khan further undermined the credibility and neutrality of any prosecution.  Mr. Khan took the unusual step of convening a “panel of experts” in January “to support the evidence review and legal analysis” related to the Gaza case. He announced his pursuit of arrest warrants after the panelists’ unanimous recommendation to do so.  The selection of the panel seems to violate the ICC Code of Conduct for the Office of the Prosecutor, which demands that its officials “refrain from any activity which is likely to negatively affect the confidence of others in the independence or integrity of the Office.” The Code of Conduct says the “impartiality” section requires “refraining from expressing an opinion that could, objectively, adversely affect the required impartiality, whether through communications media, in writing or public addresses.” These rules don’t apply to outside experts, but “by selecting and relying on panel advisers who don’t meet the ICC’s own definition of impartiality, the prosecutor undermines his own.”

This brief overview of several salient issues defining today’s Middle East drives us back to these fundamental questions:  Does Israel have a right to exist?  Yes!  Jews once again in their Promised Land? Yes, that is the reality of the 21st century.  That was certainly the vision of Theodore Herzl and the Zionist movement to transfer people from one continent where they were being persecuted, almost extinguished, to their ancient homeland.  And it was their goal to reestablish the state of Israel with its revived language of Hebrew—all in the land of their forefathers.  Yet, I would argue that there is a supernatural explanation for this miracle called Israel:  It is God fulfilling His promises first detailed in the Abrahamic Covenant and reiterated continuously throughout both the major and minor prophets of the Old Testament.  The birth of the modern nation-state of Israel is not only an event of history; it is the fulfillment of prophecy.

Ezekiel 36:16-38 is one the most important passages in Scripture envisaging the restoration of the Jewish people to their land.  As this event is accomplished, Ezekiel exclaimed, the nations will be silent in their amazement of what God has done (vv. 33-36).  I believe quite strongly that in the 21st century we are witnessing that restoration.  But the other dimension of Ezekiel’s prophetic claim is the spiritual restoration of the Jews.  That is detailed in Ezekiel 36:22-32 and 37:15-28.   God will put His Spirit in them; they will obey Him; and they will walk with Him forever.  The fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Abraham (land, seed and blessing in Genesis 12), to David (an eternal throne, kingdom and dynasty in 2 Samuel 7:16) and the New Covenant of spiritual renewal are foretold in Ezekiel 37:24-28.  The Jewish people will be united as one people, secure in the land God promised them, renewed spiritually and with their Davidic King ruling in their midst.  We await that fulfillment—and Iran and Hamas will not prevent that fulfillment!

See Karim Sadjadpour, “How Iran and Israel Are Unnatural Adversaries” in the New York Times (12 May 2024); Wall Street Journal editorial (9 June 2024); and Eugene Kontorovich in the Wall Street Journal (10 June 2024).