Understanding the War on Iran
By: Deji Yesufu
On Saturday, 28th February, 2026, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was killed at his home in Tehran, the capital of Iran, in the early hours of the morning. He was killed as a result of a joint air-attack by Israeli and American military forces. His death has marked the beginning of another war that Israel has been waging on Iran, backed by the United States of America. In June 2025, Israel carried out a 12-Day war with Iran that greatly decimated Iranian air defense systems and missile stockpiles. In the 12-Day war, America bombed three nuclear sites in Iran – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The killing of Khamenei, at the very beginning of this conflict, has struck deep at Iran’s ability to continue the current war, and it is certain that this is the beginning of the end for the Iranian regime – especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military wing of the government that has been preserving the Iranian theocracy since 1979. This essay will provide context for the crisis, helping readers understand what to expect next and why the war on Iran is a necessary evil at this time in our world.
October 7th
Israel regards the attack on its home soil on October 7th, 2023, as its own September 11. “Nine-Eleven”, as the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001 is called, redefined the history of our world. Prior to this time, the United States of America had very little understanding of Islamic fundamentalism and the terror that jihadist groups all around the world could wage on a country. Every other country in the world that has a Muslim population understood this danger, but not the Americans. America had a rude awakening with September 11, and this helped popularise the phrase “Islamic Terrorism”. But long before America came to these understandings, Israel knew what Islamic terrorism was all about. The Jewish nation had begun to return to Palestine in the 1930s, and they would find the support of the United Nations to create a nation in 1948 – a kind of appeasement for the six million Jews killed during the Second World War. It was a typical going from frying pan to fire, because the Jews discovered that their Muslim neighbours did not want them in that land. Through grit and sustained warfare, Israel had established itself in Palestine as a country. The Jews were beginning to find peace and rest from the antagonism of their Muslim neighbours when the Iranian revolution of 1979 occurred. It brought to power Shia Muslims who have as their singular motive – to destroy Israel and the United States of America. Since 1979, Iran has sponsored terror proxies all around the Middle East to destroy Israel. They backed the Houthis in Yemen to fight Israel; they are sponsors of Hezbollah in Lebanon, who continue to shoot missiles into Israel; and they are supporters of Hamas, despite the theological differences the two groups have (Hamas are Sunnis, while the Iranian leaders are Shi’ites). Everything came to a head with the October 7th, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas. Israel has since decimated the heads of many of these terror groups; they have almost levelled Gaza to the ground to fish out Hamas fighters; and they continue to wage war against every element in the Middle East that seeks to destroy Israel.
Iranian Protests and Killing
In the middle of the crisis Israel was facing, having to wage multiple-pronged wars on terror cells all around the Middle East, a crisis was brewing inside Iran. The Iranian economy was not doing particularly well because, rather than spend the nation’s resources on the well-being of its people, the Ayatollah government prioritized funding terrorist groups all around the Middle East to fight Israel, and all around the world to advance Islamic ideals. They were also putting resources into building missiles that could reach as far as the American continent, and they had become a world-leading exporter of drones (Iran supplies Russia with the biggest drone market for its war against Ukraine). All these have left their internal economy in disarray so much that their currency, the Rial, exchanges 1.3 million Rial for a dollar today. Most people anywhere in the world would endure any political situation in their country as long as they have food to eat. When things are so bad in the economy, and people cannot care for their families, the people would rise against their oppressors. This is what led to the weeks-long protests against the Iranian regime by its own people, which began on the 28th of December, 2025. The protests were peaceful, but when the Iranian government realised that those protests could be detrimental to them, they carried out a heavy crackdown on protesters. At the height of the crackdown, it is reported that 30,000 people, mostly young Iranian men and women, were killed in just two days. Donald Trump had called on the Iranian government not to kill its people, but they turned a deaf ear to his appeal. The Ayatollah government began to crumble when it succeeded in generating enemies both within and without its borders.
In the final weeks of January 2026, Donald Trump ordered the stationing of one of America’s largest aircraft carriers on the coast of Iran – the USS Abraham Lincoln. There was also a large fleet of battle-ready gunships all around the Iranian coasts. With a war armada stationed on its coasts, America entered into negotiations with Iran. The single request the Americans brought to the table was this: Iran was to end its nuclear enrichment program. The Americans did not talk about the killing of protesters; they did not talk about sponsoring terror groups against Israel; they simply asked the Iranian to bring an end to their efforts at building nuclear weapons. Iran refused. America was left with little option but to go to war with Iran.
A Greater Enemy (Atheism)
The crisis that we are witnessing in the Middle East dates back to medieval times, when Europeans carried out crusades in the Middle East to protect Christian populations in those places. Islam had been waging jihad throughout the Middle East, which led to the conquest of hitherto Christian countries like Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, etc. The crusades aimed at recovering Jerusalem, which is the site of the birth of Christianity. Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks on New York in 2001, said that the main reason for attacking America was revenge for Muslims killed in the crusades. Therefore, well-informed people understand that the crisis in the Middle East is a religious one. It is an age-old conflict between Islam and Christianity. Those who are not informed, or who wish to minimise the problem, say that the conflict is owing chiefly to Israel’s desire to dominate the Middle East, or America’s desire to access Middle Eastern oil. This is not true. The real conflict is between the two leading world religions: Islam and Christianity. But there is a greater conflict that is brewing, which might in the near future bring Christians and Muslims to support each other. That greater enemy is atheism.
While Christianity has been at the root of the civilization that the western world enjoys today, from the middle of the 18th century, Europe has been casting off the burden of Christianity off her neck. In its place is the coming of a new religion – atheism, a religion of self; a religion of independence from God; a religion that teaches that man is the author of its own existence. A religion that casts away moral boundaries and religious injunctions. This religion is, at the moment, in league with Islam, and they are the ones whose opinions are against Israel and America’s use of force on Iran. These atheists do not understand that force is necessary to sustain good and beneficial ideologies. They are against wars; they are the ones who lock up serial killers rather than execute them. It is this ideology that is at the root of the Democratic Party in the United States of America, and they are the ones mostly opposing Israel’s right to defend herself from Muslim terrorists, while they open up the borders of the United States, like they have done with Britain, to Muslim immigrants, who then flood western cities and ultimately destroy every inch of Christian civilization those countries once enjoyed. Atheism is the greater enemy, and the world is yet to see what would become of a society where people are wholly against all religions.
What the Future Holds
Three things are vital in the study and practice of religion: the religious text, the religious teacher and the application of knowledge. There is a fourth factor that all religion is coming to grasp with and this is modernity. The fact that remains quite undisputable is that knowledge has proliferated in our day and time, and many religious teachers are finding it difficult to reconcile modernity with ancient truths. Teachers of religion have a duty not only to teach the religious text; they must also reconcile its facts with the times that we live in. Christians have not found this to be too challenging. There have been times that Christianity itself has been brought to task with modern findings, developments and scientific discoveries. Through the centuries, Christians have grasped the truths of science without jettisoning their belief in the Bible. It has been a different story for Islam. Just as in Christianity, Islam has a proliferation of teachers, sects, interpretations, and applications of sacred texts.
To be fair to many Muslim groups, the majority of them do not translate the writing of the Quran to modern jihad. The unfortunate fact, however, is that there are a small number of sects in the Muslim world that regard modernism as antithetical to their religion; they see the need to uphold antisemitic views, and they have a rabid hatred for Christianity. The activities of these small groups are loud enough to represent what Islam stands for in modern times (and peaceful Muslims are not actively separating themselves from these views). It is this doctrine that the rulers of Iran have held to over the years when the cry “…death to America… death to Israel…” They have translated these to both direct and indirect attacks on both America and Israel. Because America and Israel have been recipients of terrorist attacks in the past, it would be foolhardy for these two countries to sit and watch Iran develop nuclear weapons. This is what has informed the latest attacks on Iran by the two countries. The future of our world stands on whether or not we succeed at reconciling western civilization with the east. Part of the process of this reconciliation process might involve force, and this is what we are seeing play out in the Middle East at the moment.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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