Trump and Hegseth's religious fervor is 'playing into Iran's hands': experts

According to two former diplomats, the injection of religious fervor by Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth into the Iran war is a gift to the mullahs of the embattled country that will only make things worse.

On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” contributor Sam Stein noted that Hegseth made a strained comparison between a downed US airman emerging from a cave to be saved and Jesus over the Easter weekend, which has the effect of making the US attacks less about Middle Eastern geopolitics and more like a Christian crusade.

Speaking with former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Stein asked, “When you frame war in matters of theology, when you have the president mocking Islam in his tweets or Truth Social posts, how does that play with the leadership in Iran? How will they view this war? When you have the defense secretary talking like that?”

“Well, it does two things,” Sullivan began. “First, in a way, it plays into their hands because these guys are theocrats themselves. And so the idea of having a holy war against the Great Satan, the United States and the Little Satan, Israel, is core to their identity and core to their argument, to their own people who they were just mowing down. You got to back us in this holy war. So it really plays on the turf of the Iranian mullahs and clerics.”

MS NOW host Joe Scarborough added, “The continued deification, to follow up on what Jake said, you know, and having people coming in; scam preachers, phony preachers coming in saying Donald Trump is Jesus Christ, it's grotesque... And yet every single day. And what they're doing is, Jake's exactly right. They are turning this into a crusade. They are literally playing right into Iran’s hands, right into the Revolutionary Guards’ hands.”

Former president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass agreed.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “And again, it works against the idea of compromise. For the Iranian this has become an existential conflict. For us, this is still a limited conflict. It's very hard to prevail in a limited conflict when you're up against someone who basically feels if they lose, they're gone.”

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