Some call this Israel's war. To be sure, the United States' and Europe's interests in the Persian Gulf are enough to keep the bullets flying, but do not kid yourself. It is about money. The prosperity gospel is alive and well, promising good things, including actual material benefits, for those who believe in the righteousness of the "cause." In this case, the cause is suspiciously similar to that of the medieval Crusades.
Phyllis Zagano
ArticleonCulture
WhatSayAI take
AI-assisted editorial framing · not reportingThe passage turns a geopolitical conflict into a moral critique of religiously framed power. Its force comes from collapsing strategic interests, prosperity theology, and crusading imagery into one indictment, but that compression also makes the argument rhetorically potent and historically loaded.
Editor's note
Strong and arresting language. The passage works as polemic, but its historical analogy does a lot of work very quickly.
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The context
In a March 2026 Religion News Service essay, Phyllis Zagano framed the Trump-Iran conflict as a struggle shaped less by faith than by money, power, and civilizational rhetoric.
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