In the Name of God
As you probably know, the United States recently conducted a military operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapon making facilities. On Saturday, June 21, 2025 seven B-2 stealth bombers left Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri carrying two 30,000 pound MOP “bunker buster” bombs each. Six of those B-2’s dropped their payloads on Iran’s Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, and the seventh on the Natanz Nuclear Facility. A U.S. submarine also fired 30 Tomahawk missiles at Natanz and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. All sites were reportedly seriously damaged or “obliterated.” It will take years to rebuild them and restart Iran’s nuclear weapon making process, if it ever happens.
By most reliable accounts, “Operation Midnight Hammer" was an overwhelming success. All seven crews returned approximately 37 hours after launching, unscathed and un-fired upon.
Bombers and Bunkers
Whatever your opinion of the wisdom and political propriety of this operation, it is nevertheless a tribute to the incredible dedication, skill and courage of the men and women who have been planning for this event – and probably hoping they never needed to put it into action – for 15 years, and the ones who executed it when the order was given. The American military is the finest fighting force the world has ever seen. God bless them one and all. We should also recognize the phenomenal job the Israeli military had done in destroying Iran’s air defenses so our aircraft could execute their mission not only unscathed but actually undetected.
Worldview matters
A few non-military facts are also worth highlighting:
Iran is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Its origins reach back over 4000 years, preceding even the days of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Empires which are mentioned in the Bible as early as the books of 2 Kings and Isaiah.
The United States of America is, comparatively speaking, a very young country. We will mark our 250th year as an independent nation next year on July 4, 2026. And yet:
The United States, the greatest experiment in self-governance the world has ever seen, has given the world (among many other things):
The automobile; radio; powered flight; the first and only successful manned missions to the moon and back; the internet; the personal computer (including the Mac); the “smart phone;” countless advances in medicine (vaccines against smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, etc.; insulin; anesthesia; MRI technology; etc.) and other sciences; the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes; the map and sequence of the entire human genome; and the most advanced military in the history of humanity.
This nation has also helped end two World Wars and face down tyranny, fascism, communism and terrorism around the globe. When our armed service personnel go to war, they seek to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
The United States is also by far the most generous nation in the world in terms of governmental foreign aid, as well as private contributions to needy people the world over via churches, parachurch ministries, synagogues, charities and other benevolent organizations. We also provide a safe haven for more refugees and political prisoners than any other nation in the world.
To be clear, the U.S. has not batted 1.000; it has also been involved in many less-than-honorable domestic and international activities. But overall, its positive contributions to the world far outweigh the negatives.
Life vs. Death
Since the Iranian (Islamic) Revolution in 1979, Iran, on the other hand, has given the world tyranny, and crushing oppression of its own people. According to the BBC, Iran "carries out more executions [of its own citizens] than any other country, except China." On November 15, 2019, the Iranian people began protesting a 50–200% increase in fuel prices. When the government announced increases of up to 300% the protests spread across the country. A week-long total Internet shutdown followed, and tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds killed within a few days.
Iran is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. It has attacked Israel repeatedly directly or indirectly through its proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi rebels as well as individual “lone wolves.” Iran apparently green-lighted the horrific October 7 2023 slaughter of Israelis and others, 20 of whom are apparently still alive and held in Hamas’ ghastly tunnels and other places. Iran has also been responsible for injuring and killing thousands of Americans and others over the years, and kidnapping and holding hostage hundreds more. Far from avoiding civilian casualties, they intentionally target the innocent, bombing hospitals, schools, apartment complexes etc.*
Iran’s leaders repeatedly pledge “Death to America, the Great Satan,” and “Death to Israel, the Little Satan.” That’s the major reason the United States, as well as Israel (and virtually every other civilized nation) opposed Iran being allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
As one holocaust survivor put it: If someone says he wants to kill you, it is best to take him seriously.
Israel has taken Iran seriously, finally deciding to destroy its military and defense installations to the point Iran is basically blind and defenseless against any kid of aerial assault. That’s one major reason “Operation Midnight Hammer" was executed without any opposition by Iran.
Israel could now, if it wanted to, “bomb Iran back to the stone age” any time. It has not done so. The United States could have essentially reduced Iran’s major cities to rubble that night instead of restricting its firepower to those four nuclear installations. It did not. Is there any doubt what Iran would have done if it were in a similar position of power over either Israel or the United States?
So why this difference, this stark contrast between how Iran fights its perceived enemies and how the United States fights ours? (I am purposely leaving Israel out of this part of the discussion. Their military also fights differently than Iran’s – obviously – but that’s another story.)
The Bible vs. the Qur’an
The United States was settled, founded and formed largely by people with a biblical worldview. Not that they were all born-again Christians, although a very high percentage of them professed to be followers of Christ. Paul Carlson writes:
They were: overwhelmingly Europeans; largely fleeing religious persecution in their home countries; mostly Protestants; largely Calvinists; highly educated and literate – especially in the Bible. An estimated three million people lived in the colonies at the time of the Revolutionary War. Of that number, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, while over 400,000 were of Dutch, German Reformed and Huguenot descent. That is to say, two-thirds of our Revolutionary forefathers were trained in the school of Calvin (Our Presbyterian Heritage, p. 19).
To be sure, many also filtered that worldview through an Enlightenment grid, but their basic moral and ethical beliefs were based on the Bible – the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the life and teachings of Jesus. Today, even though most Americans (including our military personnel) probably couldn’t name more than three of the Commandments or tell you what’s in the Sermon on the Mount, beyond the “Golden Rule,” still … our culture retains vestiges of its foundational biblical, Judeo-Christian values, morals and ethics. That’s a major reason our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines fight differently than other militaries.
We fight, as GK Chesterton so brilliantly put it, not because we hate what is in front of us but because we love what is behind us. That is a huge difference between our military and the military of Iran, and all its proxies. They fight because they hate those who are different, who dare to disagree with them. We fight to defend the rights of people to do so - peacefully.
Since 1979 Iran has been under the tyranny of radical Islamic clerics and Sharia law. Their worldview was and is based on the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad, with its seventh-century worldview, morality and ethics.
Their first act of terrorism was storming the American Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, labeling the embassy a "den of spies" and taking 52 embassy personnel hostage. They were held and abused barbarically for 444 days, finally being released on January 20, 1981, as President Reagan was being sworn in. Since then Iran has continued committing or sponsoring countless other acts of violence and terror against their enemies – which seems to include everyone who does not agree with their fanatical version of Islam, including other Muslims.
Ali Khamenei, the current “Supreme Leader” of Iran, is Shiite. He and his regime are known to persecute virtually anyone and everyone who is not: Christians, Hindus, Baháʼí, and other Muslims who are not among the Shia – and most especially, Jews. They think nothing of brutally murdering women, children, infants, the elderly, minorities, anyone who does not bow down at the altar of their fanatical version of Islam. They launch missiles indiscriminately into residential areas. Not only were they not ashamed of the atrocities committed by their proxies in Hamas on October 7, they positively exulted in them.
They justify all this by appealing to the Qur’an and the hadith, which are basically commentaries and expositions on the alleged actions and words of Muhammad. According to their interpretation of those writings, Allah directs them to do all these things. They murder, rape, torture and kill in the name of their god. Driven by hate, they have now driven themselves into a place of powerlessness, friendlessness and darkness.
So when those seven B-2 bombers dropped their payloads on the Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities, and that submarine fired those Tomahawk missiles at the Natanz and Isfahan sites, in my humble opinion it was an act of proactive self-defense against a bloodthirsty, seventh-century-minded regime with its merciless, death-worshiping worldview, morality and ethics; against a country which has sworn repeatedly to destroy the United States and our closest middle eastern ally, Israel.
Allah or Jesus?
Let us pray that in the aftermath, the people of Iran, who are also victims of the Ayatollah and his fellow terrorists, may experience a massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God – the One True God, not the false, bloodthirsty “god” of Islam – and that we may witness a modern-day Pentecost in the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Qom and all over the country. That the Iranians would choose the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ over the death-worshiping message of the Qur’an. That instead of seeking to kill and destroy they would choose life and blessing.
That’s a radical movement we could all enthusiastically support. That’s a fallout I think we would all love to see.
Kent
*Further terrorist acts committed by Iran and/or its proxies:
These attacks, attributed to Hezbollah, have included:
The blowing up of a van filled with explosives in front of the U.S. embassy in Beirut killing 63 Americans and Lebanese in 1983.
The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings
The 1984 United States embassy annex bombing, killing 24 people.
The hijacking of TWA flight 847 holding the 39 Americans on board hostage for weeks in 1985 and murder of one U.S. Navy sailor
The 1985–86 Paris attacks which killed 20 people and injured another 255.
The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina killing twenty-nine people in 1992.
The bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina killing 85 people in 1994.
The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.
Hamas has engaged in numerous terrorist acts, primarily targeting Israeli civilians and military personnel. These have included:
Rocket attacks: Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel, many targeting civilian populations.
Suicide bombings: Hamas has carried out suicide bombings in public places like restaurants, markets, and public transportation – again, intentionally targeting civilians.
Kidnappings: Over the years Hamas has kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and others, including the kidnapping of 251 people on October 7, 2023.
On Wednesday night, June 11, 2025, Hamas terrorists attacked a bus of Palestinian aid workers on its way to a food distribution center of the U.S.-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Hamas considers the GHF an enemy because the organization provides Gazans with free food that Hamas cannot steal to pay its terrorists. Plus, the GHF embarrasses Hamas, as it shows the truth – that Hamas doesn’t care about the Palestinian people. It only cares about power, its own power. So it has now resorted to directly killing Gaza civilians who partner with the GHF.
Along with the above, Iran is accused of participating in and/or fomenting countless other acts of terrorism, including:
Mykonos restaurant assassinations: On September 17, 1992, Iranian-Kurdish insurgent leaders Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi were assassinated at the Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin, Germany.
The sponsorship of at least thirty terrorist attacks between 2011 and 2013 "in places as far flung as Thailand, New Delhi, Lagos, and Nairobi", including a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. and bomb the Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington, D.C.
In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice charged an Iranian operative (Shahram Poursafi) with "plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump's national security advisor John Bolton." According to reports, Mike Pompeo was also a target, with a bounty of $1 million for his murder.
Masih Alinejad, a journalist and human rights activist, has been a target of Iranian theocracy since fleeing Iran in 2009. In 2021, the FBI intercepted a kidnapping plot against her by Iranian agents who had planned to kidnap her from her New York home.
The United States State Department has accused Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias of terrorism against U.S. troops, and Iran of cyberterrorism, primarily through its Quds Force. Recent Iranian state-sponsored activity has included destructive malware and ransomware operations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence's threat assessment concluded that "Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations make it a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied networks and data. Iran’s opportunistic approach to cyber attacks makes critical infrastructure owners in the United States susceptible to being targeted".
On August 12, 2022, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, a Shiite Muslim extremist, stabbed British-American novelist Salman Rushdie multiple times as he was about to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran at the time, had issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination because of his novel The Satanic Verses, which sparked outrage in Iran and across the Muslim world. Bookstores that dared to sell the book were threatened, bombed and burned. Matar was trying to carry out the fatwa.
In Yemen, Houthi rebels have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and at American Navy ships in the Mediterranean.
And of course, the horrific October 7, 2023 terrorist attack carried out by Hamas and its operatives against defenseless civilians, including Americans, in Israel. Seven Americans were taken hostage; as of this writing four are confirmed dead.
This is nothing new. Colonel Allen West, who fought against ISIS in Iraq, once replied to a questioner who asked why some fanatical Muslims want to attack and destroy America (and Israel and all of Western Civilization):
Let me say this. I don’t care about being popular or whatever. The first thing you got to do is study and understand who you’re up against. And you must realize that this is not a religion you are fighting against. You are fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You are fighting against something that has been doing this thing since 622 AD – so 7th century – [1403] years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting a Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at La Ponto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the … Germanic and Austrian Knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened in Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul because they lost that fight in 1453?
You need to get into the Qur’an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sura, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand: this is not a perversion. They’re doing exactly what this book [the Qur’an] says.
David Lane adds this:
From the 16th through the early 19th century, the Barbary States – Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco – waged a sustained campaign of Islamic warfare against non-Muslim nations. Rooted in Islamic law … these regimes justified piracy, raiding, and the enslavement of Christians as religiously sanctioned under sharia.
Their operations blended buccaneering, diplomacy, and jihad, flourishing particularly during the decline of Christian naval power in the Mediterranean. The 17th century marked the ‘Golden Age’ of Barbary piracy, when these states seized cargo and, more lucratively, human captives: European sailors and coastal villagers were enslaved, ransomed, or traded. Algiers and Tunis, in particular, built entire economies on this predatory system.
This was not lawlessness, but law – specifically, Islamic jurisprudence, which allowed warfare against non-Muslim states unless tribute [jizya] was paid. Codified in Quran 9:29, the jizya required that Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule pay a monetary tribute:
“Fight those among the People of the Book who do not believe in Allah… until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
While historically a means of subjugation, modern jihadist movements exploit the concept as a tool of extortion and ideological dominance.
In 1786, as young diplomats, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams confronted this worldview directly. Meeting with Tripoli’s ambassador in London, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, they asked why the Barbary powers declared war on nations that had done them no harm. The ambassador replied:
“It was written in their Quran that all nations who should not acknowledge their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them … and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Jefferson concluded that paying tribute would only invite further aggression and instead championed the building of an American navy. Adams, more cautious, favored tribute – until America could defend itself. As President, Jefferson ultimately launched the First Barbary War [1801-1805], asserting American strength against a theologically driven threat (The American Renewal Project, July 1, 2025).
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Let me stress: the Muslim is not our enemy, unless he specifically makes himself our enemy. The Muslim man or woman is a lost person who desperately needs to hear of the love, mercy and grace of God made manifest in his Son, Jesus. The enemy is Islam itself, with its false doctrines and utter lack of anything resembling mercy, forgiveness and grace. It is a false religion that has enslaved, oppressed and victimized countless millions and now billions of people (1.6 billion and growing rapidly) around the world.
The ultimate answer to the challenge of militant, radical Islam isn’t more bombs and missiles, although regrettably that is sometimes necessary. The ultimate answer to the challenge of Islam is the good news of Jesus Christ.
Muhammad / the Qur’an says kill your enemies. Jesus says love them.
In the end, only one worldview will win.