The Middle East conflict reflects competing theocratic mindsets in Iran, Israel and the US, where religious conviction is being used to justify violence.

What is driving the current Middle East conflict, causing untold pain and destruction to those in the firing line and unprecedented global disruption to the rest of us? Is it possible that the contestants, Iran on one side and the USA/Israel on the other, sing from the same song sheet? Although polar opposite, their values appear driven by theocratic mindsets which not only permit, but honour violence as a tool of enforcement. Are they in fact competitors for theocratic dominance?

That Iran is a theocracy is not debatable. From its belief system, its citizens experience suppression of female rights, imposition of Sharia Law, and punishment of those who do not comply. It considers freedoms enjoyed in western culture to be a debasement of their understanding of what it means to be a child of God. In Iran there is no separation of religion and politics, indeed politics exists to enforce religious belief.

The constitution of most so-called Christian countries was formulated with a separation of politics and religion. In a Christian framework the role of faith is not to govern, or to seek preference, but to be the teacher’s teaching. In other words, the mission of Christians in any community is to be agents of Christ’s transformative love, grace and mercy – no more, no less.

Israel does not claim to be a theocracy. Twenty per cent of its population are Palestinians. Many, perhaps most, of its citizens are secular, but Zionism – belief that this land has been given to them (from God?) – drives their identity and their military and political practice. What has been done, and continues to be done, to Gaza is now being done to the West Bank and Southern Lebanon. Its brazenness and contempt for international opinion, let alone international law, is breathtaking. Netanyahu has said in as many words ‘morality is weakness’.

There is no question that Zionism is front and centre as cause in this conflict. Would Iran be so keen to possess a nuclear bomb if Israel did not already possess that capability?

Now the USA. The US is not a theocracy, but many of the most vociferous of Donald Trump’s supporters are theocratic Christian nationalist believers, people to whom the President is indebted. Appointments made to the Supreme Court have moved the US in that direction. However, the most significant proponent of theocratic idealism is Pete Hegseth, Minister for War. The change of title from ‘defence’ back to ‘war’, reversing the move made by Harry Truman, underlines the legitimacy of proactive violence in the pursuit of ideals.

In making the change, Donald Trump argued that under the more passive title “we didn’t do much winning. With a department of war, we win.”

Pete Hegseth is affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), and attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee. The Church is committed to ‘Christian reconstructionist thought’, namely the reordering of society under a biblical mandate and a conservative understanding of biblical law. In this understanding, government should exist to serve biblical law.

Hegseth’s tattoos are revealing. Deus Vult (God wills it) tattooed to his arm and the Jerusalem Cross tattooed to his chest make clear his veneration of the 12th century Crusades and the crusaders. Indeed, he claims those of us who live as descendants of European Christianity owe a great debt to the crusaders for the freedoms we enjoy. The use of the cross by Hegseth and the Crusaders subverts the symbol’s intent. It is an ancient symbol, representing the suffering of Christ for the world as told by the four Gospels.

There can be little clean skin left for further tattoos, but last year Hegseth added the word Kafir which refers to one who is not a Muslim.

When confronted by the fact US armaments had destroyed a Girls School in Tehran, he invoked Deus Vult, meaning that if this happened it would have been as God intended.

Hegseth’s worldview brings him into direct and intended confrontation with the Islamic world: the Islamic world of the Crusades and the Islamic world of today. He clearly values violence as an appropriate tool in this confrontation, praying recently that each shot, each bomb, each missile would hit its mark with maximum effectiveness.

Recent protest marches brutally put down in Tehran and throughout Iran, indicate that Iranian leadership and direction is not supported by its people.

Polls in the US make it clear that the direction taken by Donald Trump as President and implemented by Pete Hegseth as Secretary for War, is not supported by an overwhelming majority of US citizens.

The exception is Israel. It appears most Israelis support the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF.

The price Israel’s Zionist ambitions have imposed upon the Palestinian people is unbearable. The cost these ambitions are now imposing on the whole global community, should be enough for all to realise Israel has become a pariah state. “From the River to the Sea, everyone should be free” (that includes Jewish people), should be chanted from the roof tops, not least in Queensland where it is now a criminal offence.

Trump has never been clear about why he entered the war and is now far from clear what he hopes to achieve by the blockade. His claim to have ‘won’ may convince himself, but it convinces no one else. One can only hope that diplomacy will prevail and that an unintended outcome of this war will be regime change in the US, if not in Iran.