The unutterably boring game goes on. When Iran launched another missile attack on Israel, President Donald Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to respond, since “we are very close to a final deal with Iran, I don't want to blow it up because of what's happening now.” My Lord, one wanted to exclaim, is he serious? This is not the man who cried “Fight! Fight! Fight!” after being nearly assassinated. This is a man who seems willing to come to a settlement with a vile enemy that will never relent in its demonic campaign to dominate the Middle East, destroy Israel, and conceivably nuke the United States.
We should remember that Iran is the national home of the Shia branch of Islam, which believes in the violent cleansing of the world under the authority of their Messiah, the Twelfth Imam, who will return into history to lead his people to victory and the establishment of Islamic justice over the planet. Shi’ites, however, are not longsuffering. They believe the Messiah’s return is imminent and can be hastened by conflict and bloodshed.
Unfortunately, Trump does not seem to recognize the stakes. He seems to be mesmerized by the enchantment of what he regards as his peculiar gift: the deal. Regrettably, the dajjal is not playing at the same table, or only pretending to. It is an axiom of Judeo-Christian civilization that you cannot deal with the devil without forfeiting your soul and inviting desolation.
This puts me in mind of the fictional president of the United States William Jackson, a pivotal figure in Joel Rosenberg’s Iranian trilogy, The Twelfth Imam, The Tehran Initiative and Damascus Countdown. Feckless, indecisive at critical moments, a delusionary peacemaker and a narcissist of magnitude, Jackson is clearly a surrogate for the lamentable Barack Obama, a failed president with more than a tincture of another failed president, Jimmy Carter, in his makeup. Jackson is a president who understands neither the geopolitical situation nor the need for forceful action at decisive historical junctures. But he has also begun to remind me of Donald Trump.
Jackson is involved in a crucial international crisis in which a nuclear armed Iran has welcomed the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi or Messiah, who has arisen from sixteen centuries of occultation, dating back to a partial phase in 874 BC and culminating in the long sleep beginning in 941 BC. The Imam kicks off his parousia by creating an Islamic kingdom incorporating the world’s Muslim nations, with its missionary and administrative center in Iran, which proceeds to target Israel with an arsenal of missiles, rockets and drones. The only significant difference from what is happening now in the real world is that two of these missiles are tipped with nuclear warheads. Owing to good intel and much luck, these two harbingers of annihilation are intercepted by the IDF. But the cataclysm has only been deferred as several warheads have escaped detection and may still be unleashed against both Israel and America. The end-times are inexorably approaching.
Until he can no longer evade the issue, President Jackson is unwilling to intervene. Jackson has arranged for a consultation with the Mahdi, hoping to reach a mutual understanding, a sort of deal, to avoid mayhem and bloodshed. The Mahdi, of course, wishes to buy time during which he intends to finish the devastation he has ignited.
Though published over a decade ago, the trilogy seems almost like a proleptic reckoning of the present unfolding of events. The series is heavily and sentimentally influenced by Christian faith and eschatology and is brindled with palpably mythical and fantastical elements, which I regard as a flaw in the workings of the plot. But its thrust is pertinent and its portrayal of a naïve and myopic president is reminiscent, as noted, not only of Obama and Carter, both of whom performed as allies of a truly evil regime in Iran, but of Trump as well in his current negotiating posture.
Given the latter’s evident unwillingness to destroy the IRGC, which he has the power to do, and his apparent desire to create a pintle hitch with a vicious and deceptive adversary, he does look like a real-life clone of William Jackson. Indeed, Jackson could have written Trump’s recent post on Truth Social: “Israel and Iran... are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE! Final negotiations on 'Peace' are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.” In other words, Israel was to stand down.
Things have changed somewhat. Responding to the downing of an Apache helicopter by the Revolutionary Guard, the U.S. has struck Qeshm island, Sirik, Bandar Abbas and two other locations near the Strait of Hormuz in what Trump calls a “proportional response.” This is merely another example of Trump’s tit-for-tat dealing method, ensuring the IRGC will retaliate and the U.S. will open a fresh pack. It should be obvious that the regime must be obliterated, but a president acting as a casino croupier is not a warrior.
“If we do the bombing,” Trump told reporters, “you know a lot of people are going to be killed. Who wants to do that? I don’t.” A few bombs in strategic military locations is okay, but nothing massive, no harming of the citizenry. The Islamic Republic, for its part, has no problem with killing innocent people, having sent illegal cluster bombs into civilian centers with impunity. At moments like these, it’s hard not to believe that Trump has lost his nerve and re-emerged as a typical ineffective American president like too many of his predecessors.
Perhaps Rosenberg is right. The only antidote to the Antichrist is the Christ, not only the herald of peace and love, we might add, but the prophet who was also capable of righteous indignation and sacred aggression, whipping the money-changers out of the temple (described in all the Synoptic Gospels), proclaiming "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew (10:34), and denouncing the scribes and pharisees as a “brood of vipers” and “whited sepulchres full of dead men’s bones” (Matthew 23:33), and so on. Christ’s vehemence is in the line of the Hebrew prophets, of whom he is the last.
Author Michael Patterson points out in Iran: Persia in Biblical Prophecy that Islamic doctrine declares the awakened Mahdi, accompanied by Isa (Jesus) “will return to destroy the cross and kill the pigs”—Christians, Jews and unbelievers. Shia Iran is a necessary vehicle for the task with its accelerationist theology and its fanatical commitment to sowing havoc and destruction as its legacy. “The Bible does not deny the eschatological thirst of the Iranians,” writes Patterson, but he believes that Christ’s love is a mighty weapon against it. But so is Christ’s anger. And so is the fortitude and resolve and valor of those who refuse to make a deal with evil.
I have long been a great fan of Donald Trump and have written several articles and book chapters in praise of his courage and determination. I do not wish to distrust him. But he does not appear to understand Islamic, and particularly Shia, history and theology, which demands war and slaughter of the infidels and the establishment of a worldwide Caliphate—or rather, Imamate. If Trump continues in his apparently weak, rash and procrastinating manner, as he has been for some time in the conduct of the Iranian war, and if it is not a plan so subtle that I cannot pierce its reticulated web, my esteem and support will change dramatically. And I am sure many feel as I do.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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