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2 Holy warriors set sights on
Iran By Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California - Over the past 20
years, the US Christian Right has evolved into one
of the most powerful grassroots organizing forces
within the Republican Party, and a host of
Christian Zionists have taken a well-earned seat
at the foreign-policy table.
At the same
time, their support for Israel is not only
growing, it is
becoming an influential
political factor.
Several prominent
Christian Right and conservative Jewish leaders
have teamed up to found organizations that have
provided millions of dollars to Israeli charities,
lobbied in support of policies advanced by
right-wing leaders in Israel, opposed President
George W Bush's so-called "roadmap" to peace in
the Middle East, and have helped defray the costs
of the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel,
among other activities.
While the
Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have
been longtime supporters of Israel, the founding
this year of Christians United for Israel by John
Hagee, the pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone
Church in San Antonio, Texas, drew a great deal of
media attention.
As Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert's popularity has plummeted since the
end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Christian
Zionists in the United States view the outcome not
only as a defeat for Israel, but as a prelude to a
much wider war. In fact, they think the conflict
might be a sign of impending Armageddon.
"The end of the world as we know it is
rapidly approaching," Hagee wrote in his most
recent book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to
the World . "Just before us is a
nuclear countdown with Iran," he wrote, "followed
by Ezekiel's war [as described in the biblical
Book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39], and then
the final battle - the battle of Armageddon."
For Hagee, best-selling author Joel
Rosenberg and other Christian Zionists, Israel
plays the critical role in End Time scenarios.
Their books, commentaries and public statements
reflect their beliefs that serial conflicts in the
Middle East are a sign of the biblical prophecy
presaging Armageddon, the return of Jesus Christ,
and the final battle for the souls of mankind.
And some have started to train their
sights on Tehran. In a recent weblog post
datelined Jerusalem, Rosenberg wrote: "The buzz
here in the last few days is that Israel is
seriously considering a preemptive strike against
Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic-missile
sites."
Given Israel's less-than-sterling
performance against Hezbollah this past summer,
Rosenberg was not convinced that Israel "has the
capacity - or the will - at the moment to
neutralize the Iranian nuclear and ballistic
missile threat".
However, with "a new
[Adolf] Hitler rising in Iran", it is up to Bush,
who met with Olmert in Washington in mid-November,
to deal with the Iranian threat: "If President
Bush believes Iran needs to be neutralized (and I
believe he does), and he is convinced that
military action is the only way, I don't believe
he is there right now, then the US should take the
lead."
After all, wrote Rosenberg, "If
anyone is going to stop Iran from threatening the
world with nuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them, it has to be soon, perhaps no later
than the end of 2007. After all, 2008 is an
American election year. [The year] 2009 will be
the start of a new administration. By then it may
be too late. The thermonuclear genie may be out of
the bottle."
The Israeli-Hezbollah war led
several US cable-television news networks to raise
questions about whether the crisis in the Middle
East was a signal that the "End Times" were
approaching. Rosenberg, author of such apocalyptic
political thrillers as The Copper Scroll,
The Ezekiel Option, and The Last
Jihad, was invited to appear on CNN and the
Fox News Channel.
In one recent
appearance, Rosenberg said he had made several
visits to "speak at a White House Bible study" and
had conversations with "a number of congressional
leaders and Homeland Security, Pentagon
[officials] about my novels, which are based on
Bible prophecy".
Rosenberg said, "The
question that's been most interesting among these
various administration and congressional officials
is, 'Are you saying that the Bible talks about an
alliance between
