As President Donald Trump renews his threats to bomb “the entire country” of Iran, he is offering a new justification for the costly five-week conflict with no clear end in sight: God himself wants the United States to do it.
Trump said Monday that he believed God supports the United States’ actions in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, a widening conflict that has killed thousands in the Middle East, wounded many more and left 13 U.S. service members dead.
“I do, because God is good,” Trump said in response to a Washington Post reporter’s question during a White House news briefing. “And God wants to see people taken care of.”
Trump’s comments mark a shift in how he is describing the war. After offering conflicting explanations for U.S. involvement — including whether his goal is regime change — he has begun in recent days to cast the conflict in religious terms as he raises the possibility of broader strikes.
The president earlier Monday threatened to bomb the country’s power and transportation infrastructure until it resembles the “stone ages.” He claimed that such actions are welcomed by Iranian people who want their government overthrown and who, he said, are begging the U.S. to “please keep bombing.”
Trump did not answer a question about whether he has sought God’s direction as the conflict has escalated. But he suggested that the Almighty supports U.S. action, even if God is grieved by the violence.
“God doesn’t like what’s happening. I don’t like what’s happening,” Trump continued. “Everyone says I enjoy it. I don’t enjoy this. I don’t enjoy it.”
He went on to tout that he “ended eight wars” earlier in his term, a reference he has frequently made to brokering peace deals between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and others. “That makes me much happier than what we’re doing right now,” the president said.
Trump, who identifies as a Christian but does not claim to regularly pray or read the Bible, has invoked faith at times in his second term, including suggesting that his political return and survival after an assassination attempt carried a larger purpose. The language has echoed that of some of his supporters, who have cast him as a figure protected or chosen by God.
In recent days Trump has hinted that the war is an existential battle between Christianity and Islam.
“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump wrote in a social media post Easter Sunday morning.
U.S. presidents have often invoked faith in times of conflict. But others, such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who also presided over war in the Middle East, have gone out of their way to emphasize that the United States was not battling Muslims or Islam, but a specific group of people who had attacked America.
Some Muslim leaders quickly condemned Trump’s use of the “Praise be” phrase as a mockery of the religion, including the Imams Council of Michigan — a state where Trump made gains with Muslim voters in 2024. Imam Steve Elturk called Trump’s post “a dangerous escalation that undermines both international stability and the moral fabric of public discourse.”
The post on Sunday drew parallels to one the president had made a day earlier: “Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.
Some Catholic leaders have harshly criticized the U.S. strikes in Iran, including Pope Leo, who on Palm Sunday preached that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Two days later, Leo urged Trump by name to end the war. Leo, the first American-born pope, had previously criticized the Trump administration’s policies more broadly without mentioning the president himself.
And Trump ally-turned-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican former congresswoman and a Protestant Christian, on Sunday bashed the president’s vows to escalate the war, declaring that Trump “is not a Christian.”
“Jesus commanded us to love one another and forgive one another. Even our enemies,” Greene wrote.
On Monday, in describing the rescue of a U.S. airman in a mountainous region of Iran, Trump credited God for looking out for the U.S. mission, which he previously described as miraculous. “Well, it was the Easter — we were in Easter territory, I guess,” Trump said. “But God was watching us. Amazing.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who flanked Trump throughout the briefing, used the metaphor of the crucifixion, death, burial in a tomb and resurrection of Jesus to discuss the military’s rescue of the colonel on Sunday.
“You see, shot down on a Friday, Good Friday; hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday; and rescued on Sunday,” Hegseth said. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
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