The resignation letter of Joe Kent, director of counterterrorism in the United States, reveals the destructive and destabilizing influence of Israel on American foreign policy. In his first interview, he mentions this role in triggering the war that destroyed Iraq. He said he resigned to avoid repeating the horror with Iran.
Published at 14:00
By Amir Khadir, Former Quebec Solidaire Deputy
The current war goes beyond the usual geostrategic explanation. To understand what pushed Trump into this war for the sole benefit of Israel, we must open the angle of analysis.
An often overlooked dimension in the analysis is becoming increasingly clear: the three main actors in the current crisis – the Iranian theocracy of the Pasdaran, the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, and the Trump administration in the United States – are driven, each in their own way, by a eschatological vision of the world. In other words, they act under the influence of actors who believe in the end times. This convergence of the three millenarianisms, which herald the return of the messiah for a thousand-year reign, produces a warlike dynamic that classical diplomacy is structurally unable to defuse.
Iran’s Pasdaran: The Return of the Mahdi
Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has built itself on the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih – the government of the Islamic jurist – which awaits the return of the Imam Mahdi, the 12th Imam who disappeared in the 9th century according to Shiite tradition. The belief in the reappearance of this messiah is shared by millions of Shiites worldwide in a spiritual and apolitical way.
But in Iran, where I am, the hardline factions of the Revolutionary Guards – the Pasdaran – have made it an ideological vector: for them, the greater the regional instability, the more imminent the return of the Mahdi.
The power in Iran, against which I have long militated, is now held by the Pasdaran, who control all sectors of the economy, state, and security apparatus, supported by a militia corps of nearly 1 million members.
The theocracy, now dynastic, is nothing more than a facade of legitimacy – very fragile at that – for what is in fact a fascist cartel state. The Iranian people – who rose up massively in 2019, 2022, and 2026 – are its first victims. Their territory is now the center of a war they did not choose, in the name of prophecies they no longer share.
The Reconstruction of the Temple and Greater Israel
The coalition government in place in Israel since 2022 constitutes the most extremist current ever to come to power in Israeli history. Prime Minister Netanyahu leads a strategic alliance with ministers like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose extremist positions centrally aim at the realization of Greater Israel – a distant biblical vision – through annexing the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and parts of territories in several countries from Egypt to Iraq.
For more fundamentalist Israelis, the ultimate goal is the reconstruction of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa Mosque is located – a goal that would require its destruction.
In this cosmology, the war against Iran is not really a security operation: it is a necessary step towards the fulfillment of a divine promise. Some Israeli leaders have explicitly called the war in Gaza an “Armageddon.” The underlying strategy is revealing: Israel knows it cannot confront Iran alone. The goal is to create conditions for an escalation that makes US entry into the war inevitable – a calculation that has worked according to Joe Kent.
United States: Trump Held Hostage by Eschatological Allies
Trump’s victory in November 2024 placed a hybrid coalition at the center of the American executive: on one side, evangelical Zionist Christians – tens of millions of voters who believe, based on a literal reading of the Apocalypse, that the return of Christ is conditioned on the reconstruction of the Temple and a final battle in Jerusalem; on the other side, donors and advisors of the “Israel First” movement, like the Adelson family, who work to align American foreign policy fully with the goals of the Israeli right.
The tragic irony is that this alliance is based on a fundamental theological misunderstanding: in evangelical cosmology, Jews will eventually have to convert or perish – a fact Israeli Zionists cynically hide.
But each side uses the other for their own eschatological ends: fundamentalists in Israel rely on the long-awaited Messiah to settle the score with all unbelievers.
Trump – elected on promises of non-interventionism – finds himself embroiled in a conflict he no longer controls. The internal fractures within the MAGA movement illustrate this tension: Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, Candace Owens, and Steve Bannon publicly denounce the influence of a pro-Israel lobby on the White House but struggle to change the trajectory.
The Fatal Convergence of Dangerous Delusions
What makes the situation unprecedentedly grave is the triple synchronization of these millenarianisms. For the first time in modern history, three major actors in a conflict share a theological vision of war: destruction is not a failure – it is a step towards redemption. Chaos heralds the Mahdi’s arrival, the true messiah of Shiites. War prepares for the reconstruction of the Temple, a condition for the arrival of the Mashia. And Armageddon hastens the return of Christ. In this framework, peace itself becomes a spiritual threat to these fanatics. This is precisely what renders diplomatic rationality powerless: one does not negotiate with actors who believe they serve a superior divine truth above all human calculations.
Ultimately, the cost of these intersecting millenarian delusions is paid by ordinary people: Iranian, Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese civilians. Their leaders – ensconced in their palaces, bunkers, and mansions – will not share their fate. The only possible response remains what it has always been: the political awakening of the peoples and their collective refusal to die for the prophecies of their elites. Faced with such hallucinations, lucidity is the first form of resistance.
