A Chronic US Blind Spot: Iran’s Religious Motivations For War
(ANALYSIS) The United States is on the verge of being burned again for not seeing the importance of religious belief driving human behavior in global conflicts.
For the U.S., it doesn’t make sense that the war in Iran isn’t over. Perhaps that is why President Donald Trump, in an Easter Sunday social media rant, called Iranian leaders “crazy bastards” who will be “living in hell” if they did not open the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. has been burned badly in the past for not paying attention to strong beliefs easily found in conversations with real people or in simple searches of public statements made by religious leaders.
READ: The Sunni-Shi’a Muslim Divide: Why It Matters In The Iran War
As documented by an article written by Josh Craddock in Providence magazine in 2016, the U.S. State Department was, in the words of a key official, “caught relatively flat-footed” by the religious theology of Twelver Shiʿism that fueled the Iranian Revolution and radical regime change still ruling today.
Again, regarding 9/11, we should have seen it coming. Among other writings, Osama Bin Laden stated in a fatwā that: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it …”
Religious motivation doesn’t make sense to people who overlook religion.
For example, in conventional warfare, avoiding death is considered rational. However, a martyr’s death in Islamic jihad makes perfect sense to some Muslims fighting for their faith because it guarantees paradise without judgment and several rewards, including, most famously, 72 wide-eyed virgins.
In Iran, there is a unique purpose to its official religious belief. The mullahs teach that Iran is called to prepare the ground for the return of the Twelfth Imam, a Messianic figure commonly called the Mahdi.
In the current war, an overlooked yet critical point is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not defending Iran as a state but its version of Islam as a global religion. That is why it is not called the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
That’s not to say the Iranian public agrees with the government. A 2000 study of 50,000 people by The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran showed an increasingly secularized public, with nearly half saying they have lost their religious faith.
While the state claims 95% of Iranians are Shi'ite Muslims, only 32% of respondents in the survey self-identified as Shi'ite Muslims.
The survey findings illustrate how the spiritual landscape of a nation at war can be as nuanced as the geopolitical landscape, deserving expert attention and analysis to predict behavior.
“Diplomatic and intelligence communities must be intimately aware of man’s spiritual dimension if they wish to understand and predict the trajectory of political forces,” Craddock wrote. “American foreign policy simply cannot afford to operate within a secular vacuum. “
Tim Orr agrees and is concerned. He has six academic degrees, including an MA in Islamic Studies from the Islamic College in London, which teaches the Twelver Shi’a tradition.
In The Times of Israel, he wrote this on March 4: “
“Most wars can be halted through political pressure, negotiation, or deterrence. But this conflict is grounded in a dogma that sanctifies destruction and bloodshed as necessary steps toward redemption. Within this framework, Israel’s destruction is not simply a strategic objective; it is portrayed as a sacred duty. Iran will therefore persist in waging this war because its leaders believe they are carrying out God’s work, and that only through Israel’s elimination will redemption arrive. Until the West grasps this theological dimension, its response to Iran will remain inadequate — and dangerously naïve.”
The U.S. needs to fight fiery religious beliefs, not with more bombs, but with bullets of information that weaken those beliefs.
Mark O’Keefe is a former editor at Religion News Service and associate director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.