Troops Being Told To Prepare for ‘Armageddon’ In Iran | EUROtoday

For some U.S. navy commanders, the rising conflict in Iran is a part of a biblical plan to deliver concerning the finish of the world as we all know it, in accordance with complaints filed by over 100 service members.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has acquired a litany of complaints about spiritual ideology seeping into navy orders because the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iranunbiased journalist Jon Larsen first reported.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit group established 21 years in the past that focuses on making certain constitutional protections for service members, spoke with HuffPost by telephone Tuesday morning and illuminated some particulars of the complaints, which have come from greater than three dozen navy models located in at the least 30 completely different navy installations.

“We started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” Weinstein stated.

Weinstein stated the “metric promised” within the Bible’s Book of Revelation is horrifying and may fear everybody.

“They are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon,” Weinstein stated. “That’s a lot of blood.”

Part of what makes the accounts so disturbing, Weinstein stated, is that service members aren’t in a position to push again after they’re given orders that blur the road concerning the separation of church and state.

“This is all about time, place and manner,” he stated. “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony.”

One of the complaints MRFF acquired over the weekend got here from a non-commissioned officer presently stationed exterior of Iran however awaiting deployment at a second’s discover. That officer filed the grievance on behalf of himself and 15 different troops, all of whom are of various spiritual backgrounds. (For their safety, MRFF is protecting the identification of those service members nameless.)

The non-commissioned officer, who’s Christian, reported to MRFF {that a} commander advised them to inform fellow troops that the conflict in Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan.” The commander allegedly cited the Book of Revelation and the part particularly referring to Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Jesus Christ.

The non-commissioned officer stated the messaging from higher-ups shouldn’t be solely “destroy[ing] morale and unit cohesion” amongst troops, however additionally they consider the commanders are flagrantly violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution, which ensures the liberty of faith.

According to the grievance first reported by Larsenthe commander stated President Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

The commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy,” the grievance stated.

“I and my fellow troops know that it is completely wrong to have to suffer through what our commander said today. It’s not just the separation of church and state … It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command,” the officer wrote in his grievance to MRFF.

Weinstein stated some service members known as him on Sunday to report that they have been being invited to Bible research at their commanders’ private houses to “discuss how this was all part of the plan and it’s all being lived out in the Book of Revelation and Christian eschatology.”

Commanders have been “in a hurry” to get subordinates on board, in accordance with the complaints acquired by MRFF.

Once a service member makes a grievance to MRFF, discovering an answer may be tough. Service members have just a few completely different choices, Weinstein stated: If troops are advised they lack braveness, intelligence or bravery due to their spiritual custom or lack thereof, they will file an inspector common grievance or an ethics grievance inside the navy.

“But then you completely out yourself,” Weinstein stated. “And when you do that in the military, you become what we call a ‘tarantula on a wedding cake.’ How long do you think that cake lasts at that wedding?”

Troops can complain to navy choose advocates, attorneys or chaplains, however the latter may be particularly tough. The majority of the U.S. navy’s chaplains are Christian and plenty of are evangelical.

“By itself, that’s fine,” Weinstein stated. “But if you are a Christian Nationalist, you don’t pay any attention to the time, place or manner … with any sort of religious extremism, we end up not with little streams, or creeks or brooks, but with oceans and oceans of blood.”

Weinstein stated none of this could essentially be stunning. The evangelical leanings of the Trump administration — and particularly the Department of Defense — haven’t been a secret. At a prayer breakfast final month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the U.S. was a “Christian nation,” and there are prayer conferences on the Pentagon every month.

But placing faith into politics is inflicting “generational damage” onto the U.S. and its navy, Weinstein stated.

The White House didn’t instantly return a request for remark.

Harrison Mann, a 13-year veteran of the U.S. Army who served beneath President Barack Obama, throughout Trump’s first time period and beneath President Joe Biden, advised HuffPost that for troopers, there “isn’t much of a difference” contained in the navy — at the least “culturally speaking” — even when presidents are “doing some really crazy stuff” publicly, he stated.

Because of that, he argues it might be too quickly to say whether or not Hegseth can really inflict everlasting injury to the navy. Mann is, nonetheless, deeply apprehensive about what occurs to the general public notion of the troops within the meantime.

“There’s danger in commanders telling soldiers they only vouch for Christians, whites or MAGA supporters. When the public starts to view the military that way too, then you get to a much more dangerous place where they no longer have trust in them,” he stated.

Today, Mann is the affiliate director of campaigns for Win Without War, a grassroots progressive overseas coverage advocacy group based mostly in Washington, D.C. that fashioned in 2003 in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Mann left his function as assistant to the top of the Middle East Center on the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, in 2024, for ethical causes.

After the assaults in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Mann stated his mission as a soldier primarily turned about supporting Israel and sharing intel with Israeli navy officers. But as soon as he noticed what the conflict in Gaza was changing into — “a genocide,” he stated — he resigned.

Mann is aware of from private expertise how scary it may be for a soldier to talk out. The Trump administration’s politicization of the navy, because the MRFF complaints clearly present, makes it tougher. Mann worries it’s quick making a scenario the place subordinate leaders might consider the messaging from on excessive grants them “tacit approval to start imposing their own religious beliefs on others.”

“I can tell you I’m very worried,” he stated. “I think most people who join the military, they want to do something they feel is noble and they want to do the right thing. But the potential consequences for refusing an unlawful order or standing up for what you think is right is very high … So it goes back to the question: What can everyone else do to help them?”

To begin, Mann stated the general public can broadcast help for service members who communicate up or disobey illegal orders or unconstitutional directives. That validation is in brief provide contained in the navy, so it should come from the skin, he stated.

“It’s very frightening to imagine that you would be on your own if you tried to defy an unlawful order,” Mann stated. “We need to see increasing efforts by members of Congress to impeach Secretary Hegseth and everyone can put pressure on their lawmakers to support that effort.

“You can support a lot of the organizations like About Face and Win Without War that are trying to create a welcoming, safe space for service members who are experiencing this kind of unfair treatment,” he stated.

Mann stated he isn’t hopeless concerning the future regardless that there’s a lot to despair over proper now.

“It’s way too soon to give up. There’s just so much that we have not tried… there are so many pressure tactics that haven’t culminated yet. There’s so much people power that has not yet been mobilized. As terrifying as what is happening is, there’s a critical opportunity for growth and pushback against Trump’s agenda,” he stated.

CORRECTION: This story has been up to date with Harrison Mann’s appropriate title.