The 28 February 2026 US-Israel attack on Iran and the subsequent spat between US President Trump and Pope Leo, including the salvo by Vice President Vance on Christian “just war” doctrine, brought back to the fore an ages-old debate about the respective roles of “Church and State” or religious and civic/political authorities. In Western liberal democracies, this issue had been settled, or so one would have thought, with a clear separation between the two. Even if not always spelled out in constitutions and legal frameworks, and despite persistent mutual interference, the understanding in all democracies in Europe, the Americas and beyond has been that the state governs the temporal affairs of the respective people and territory, while religious authorities focus on personal ethics and the soul.
Cast in this light, the US and Israel attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran could be portrayed as the European / Western forces of the Enlightenment taking on the ugly beast of Theocracy, in a new “State vs. Church” battle at global level. This has been a message subtly but surely emitted by the perpetrators of the attack and amplified by friendly media. The intended implication is that this illegal under international law attack was nonetheless justified by the backward nature of the Iranian “regime”. References to the bloody internal crackdown by “the Ayatollahs” or “the Mullahs” on protests across Iran at the end of 2025-beginning of 2026 complete the message. For some this would be a sufficient justification of the targeted killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with members of his family, as well as of the bombing of a primary school with more than 175 people killed, many of them children, which were among the first targets of the attack.
The State vs. Church or Modernity vs. the Middle Ages analogies cannot be equated to Good vs. Evil, though, as those using or implying them would like the world to believe. Take Israel, to start with. It is routinely referred to by its leaders as “the Jewish State”, despite its large Arab minority, about 21 per cent of the population (not counting the population of Palestine / the Occupied Palestinian Territory, who have no citizenship rights), with an additional 7 per cent of non-Jewish citizens. The government currently in place includes, in addition to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s nationalist Likud party, four other parties – Shas, Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionist Party and New Hope – three of which belong to the ultra-religious right. These parties, politicians and a significant part of the electorate hold “Greater Israel” aspirations, as a right given by God to Abraham and his descendants. This apparently frees them from any legal or moral constraint in pursuing a decades-old brutal occupation of Palestinian lands, expanding Jewish settlements, arbitrarily detaining and even extrajudicially assassinating perceived opponents, including foreign leaders, in a state of permanent preemptive or anticipatory self-defence.
Turning to the US, the frequent invocation of God as a US war ally by senior members of the US Administration, notably Secretary of Defence/War Pete Hegseth, is reminiscent of the narratives of the Christian Kings of Europe in their crusades against “the infidels” many centuries ago. This chimes well with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent call on Europeans to join the US in a renewed Western, Christian empire. No surprise, as both Secretaries work for a Jesus-like figure, who would half-jokingly be interested in becoming Pope too.
President Trump and his team’s religious exuberance could be attributed to their catering to their home base, as the US religious right supports the Republican Party in general, and President Trump in particular. “God Bless America” and “God Save America” are patriotic songs that still hold resonance with US audiences and, as expressions, are routinely uttered by leaders of both main US political parties. European leaders as a rule stay away from such pronouncements and most probably don’t consider the US leadership’s invocation of God, especially under President Trump and his disciples, as consistent with secular liberal democracy and the Enlightenment project.
Returning to Iran, it is worth noting that it is not the only self-proclaimed Islamic Republic. Pakistan and Mauritania also call themselves that in their official country names. In fact, an Islamic Republic combines elements of democracy, including elected institutions, as well as a constitutional commitment to Islamic law. The office of supreme leader is particular to Shiite Iran and is occupied by a clerical jurist elected by the Assembly of Εxperts. By contrast, the president is elected directly by the people, and the government under it has to operate within the policy framework set by the supreme leader.
It is worth noting here the repeated pronouncements by the assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against the acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, on religious and ethical grounds. This has kept Iran in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and constrains its government and military probably more than any externally imposed restrictions on nuclear material processing. There are also the polemical pronouncements since the early days of the Iranian revolution (1979), by the first Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, who started calling the US “the Great Satan” and using the slogan “Death to America”, with Israel being the “Little Satan” and the accompanying chant “Death to Israel”.
While the US and Israel don’t engage in corresponding name-calling with religious overtones, Israel refers to Iran as an existential threat and both Israel and the US accuse Iran of being a key sponsor of terrorism. As for nuclear weapons, the US is a declared nuclear state and the only state in the world that has actually used such weapons against an adversary. Recently, President Trump created an uproar even among fellow Republicans, when he threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight” in case Iran did not comply with his demand to open the Strait of Hormuz; such a biblical punishment could only happen through the use of nuclear weapons. As far as Israel is concerned, it is widely considered to possess nuclear weapons and is not party to the NPT.
Having reasonably established the strong religious overtones that characterize the narratives of both sides and all three parties to the Iran War, one wonders whether actual spirituality comes into the picture at all. Where is the “Golden Rule” that is common to most religions, certainly the three Abrahamic ones, which guide people to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? On the basis of the above, we can safely say that, despite often religiously loaded language, key country leaders have no “fear of God” in themselves, as their acts demonstrate. Geopolitics trumps the Divine, using it as a fig leaf in the pursuit of national and personal interest, profit and glory. Unless something drastic happens, e.g. a Deus ex machina appears, “the international community” rediscovers its conscience, religions coalesce around a shared spirituality and the Golden Rule, or people revolt against their ruthless leaders, “holy wars” will continue to kill people by the thousands, set back the lives of millions, degrade the planetary environment, and keep the world in a state of hi-tech Middle Ages.
Dr Georgios Kostakos is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). He has been a UN staff member, including with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and field missions for political affairs and human rights. He has also worked with think tanks, academic institutions and as a consultant on global governance and sustainability, peace and resilience.
