Israel's theological obsessions and the commentators who attach these obsessions to Israel and drag the world into catastrophe

The latest war, which began with Israel and the US attacking Iran, is not merely a military reckoning; it is also a mental war waged through meanings, symbols and sacred references. What stands out in the statements that came in the first hours of this war, which Israel and the US launched by violating all the rules of conventional warfare, is that the conflict is framed not only in the language of security and deterrence but also with theological allusions.

This was not something we did not know, though. Israel's reason and manner of existence has never gone outside its own theological prophecies. We always say it: while imposing secularism on the whole world like a perfect shackle, they themselves have almost begun to live inside their holy books. The world they built after the First World War is nothing but a stage that serves to bring to life the scenario their holy books wrote for them. On this stage friend, enemy, ally are all defined to serve their own religion and their roles are written accordingly. This is the fundamental reason why certain events emerge, at a moment no one expects, in ways that cannot be made sense of. Seemingly there is a war proceeding according to the international theories we have memorized, and many international parties naively attempt mediation or call on the parties for restraint and common sense and point to diplomatic paths. Yet there is in fact an entirely different level to the matter, and it is a level that the international relations theories or analyses up to now have not paid much attention to and have not been able to believe exists. They cannot believe it exists because it is truly hard to believe.

Abdullah al-Muhaysini points out that reason and strategic logic foresee that an actor entering a war will try not to widen but to reduce the number of fronts. By this he is asking why Tehran is targeting the Gulf even though it knows it will give rise to additional pressure and new fields of conflict. It is indeed hard to say that Iran too is behaving sufficiently rationally in this war. It too has more theological reasons than rational ones. But it is possible to say that however theologically Iran behaves, it cannot behave as much so as Israel. It is not possible to say that Israel's real motivation in this war is to create a safer area for itself. After all, the most secure wall of safety can be built by a policy in which friends are increased and the enemy is reduced. Yet it is impossible not to see that in this process Israel and the US are increasing their enemies still further and are constantly accumulating hatred and anger toward themselves among people. This is a situation that can be seen at once in a rational political analysis. Could it be that Israel and the US do not see it? It is impossible that they do not see it, but this is precisely why we say that what led them into this war is theological and emotional reasons rather than rational ones.

These historical-religious references, occasionally resorted to in Israeli political discourse, have become more visible in the latest statements. The reference to "Amalek," which has now become customary in all Israeli war discourse, above all Netanyahu's, although it looks like a symbolic language, in the political context implies the category of existential enemy. The Amalek narrative found in the Tanakh is part of a historical text; but on the modern political stage such a reference serves the function of positioning the other side as an absolute and irreconcilable enemy. This is not an ordinary rhetorical choice. Because there is a great difference between defining an enemy as a "security threat" and presenting it as the "representation of historical evil."

That the US-Israel alliance, proceeding from this point of theological bigotry, killed 165 children in its first operation, undertaken in the name of supposedly saving Iran from the current Mullah regime, was an act fully in keeping with the theologically grounded concept of the Amalek enemy. If those among the Iranian people who oppose the regime have believed that the US would save them from this regime, this should be a great warning for them. The US never, and Israel never, lifts a finger to save any people from oppression. One has been able to fit it to its theological reasons, while the other acts if it has sufficient interest, and only for that interest. Meanwhile, of course, what it ruins is a hundred times what it saves.

Such a language narrows the field of negotiation and carries the war out of limited aims into a sacred frame. Conflicts charged with existential and metaphysical meaning are harder to end. Because now the matter is not only strategic interests but the claim of fulfilling the requirements of a sacred narrative.

Similarly, it is also noteworthy that some actors in the US present Iran as "a government of radical clerics making decisions with an apocalyptic theology." This discourse serves a two-sided function: on the one hand, by portraying Iran as an irrational actor it legitimizes harsh intervention, while on the other it pushes the conflict out of the secular geopolitical plane onto a plane of theological opposition. Yet they are trying to hide their own motivations, which are thoroughly theological, theologically bigoted to a degree incomparable with Iran's. However much they hide it, the war, ceasing to be a classical struggle of balance of power, has already rapidly turned into an encounter of belief systems. By doing so, Israel and the US are in fact provoking the entire two-billion-strong Muslim world.

Yet when Iran's practice over the last forty years is examined, one sees that, in contrast to its utterly sectarian and theological policy within the Muslim world, in its relations with the West, despite ideological emphases at the rhetorical level, an extremely calculating, cost-benefit-based foreign policy is pursued. Patterns of behavior such as the use of proxy forces, avoiding the risk of direct war, and taking economic thresholds into account make it difficult to place Iran in the category of an "irrational actor moving by purely theological motivation." But when the other side's discourse carries the conflict onto a theological plane, the narrowing of the rational ground is inevitable.

This very theological framework requires a different look at Iran's retaliation toward the Gulf as well. If the other side's language has carried the war to an existential level, then for Tehran stepping back would mean not only a military but a symbolic defeat. In that case a strategy of widening the conflict to globalize the cost comes into play. Targeting the Gulf is a message to the whole world via the energy lines: "The price of this war will not remain limited to itself."

In this atmosphere the conflict that rose two days ago on the Afghanistan-Pakistan line also requires separate attention. The border tensions between the two countries are not new; it is a seed of discord that the British sowed between the two countries as they left the region, but the timing of the seed's coming into daylight today is meaningful. At a moment when the global agenda is locked on a war in the Middle East loaded with theological meaning, the opening of such a front between two Sunni-Muslim countries distracts and fragments attention, but may undoubtedly have a function far beyond that. This widens the maneuvering space of the great powers and, by linking regional crises to one another, gives rise to a more complex security architecture. The fragility of Pakistan's domestic politics and the problems of recovery in Afghanistan, which has regained its independence, driven out the enemy, and is engaged in the struggle of establishing state institutions in the country and developing its land, may turn such an escalation into a problem whose consequences do not remain between the two countries, and link it to the conflict among Iran, Israel and the US.

Undoubtedly it is not possible to think that the matter is related to an operation against the Sunni Axis that Netanyahu voiced in his meeting with Indian prime minister Modi. In such a hastily constructed connection, an absurd assumption is put into operation that Afghanistan could move against Pakistan in favor of India-Israel-the US, whereas on this matter there is a theological obstacle, taboo in degree, that the Taliban administration could never approach. Incidentally, the issue between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not an issue that will never be resolved; in this matter the mediation of Turkey and Qatar can certainly be very effective.

Returning to the Israeli and US attacks on Iran, let us not pass over noting that the Epstein files debate in US domestic politics adds another layer to the event as well. Claims of connections reaching political elites deepen the crisis of trust within the system. Historically, great external crises have had the effect of overshadowing domestic debates. This need not always be the result of a conscious plan; but the timing shows how foreign policy is intertwined with the domestic political agenda. As pressure rises at home, the tendency to harden abroad may strengthen. This matter too has no relation to theology; it is directly related to domestic political balances. Of course, as far as Epstein's again being a MOSSAD-directed operational apparatus can be thought distant from theological extensions.

Although theology is decisive, there is of course an interpretation, and there are interpreters, that determine this theology too. This process of interpretation is also something that proceeds through interests, calculations and distortions. That is, the fault is not entirely in the book; indeed the book has no fault at all.