February 2026. Facing Tucker Carlson, the United States Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is asked to clarify the legal basis for Israeli sovereignty. Carlson presses the point: on what legal grounds does Israel claim its current borders — and, moreover, those that its most expansionist leaders draw from the Nile to the Euphrates?

The former Baptist pastor and Fox News commentator turned diplomat fumbles for an answer. He first invokes international law, then falls back on the Bible. He cites Genesis and a verse promising descendants a territory encompassing most of the present-day Middle East, covering Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and large parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

When pressed by Tucker Carlson on whether biblical words might actually be applied in reality, the diplomat’s answer comes down to a few words : « It would be good if they took it all. » Pushed further on the question of exactly who can claim this divine promise — are Jews a people, a religion, an ethnicity? — Huckabee stumbles. Then, cornered, lets slip: « As long as they can defend it. »

The statement is not a slip of the tongue. It is a real-time admission of a legal vacuum filled by theology. For that is precisely the crux of the matter: Israel has never constitutionally defined its borders. And Washington’s representative in Tel Aviv has, as his entire territorial doctrine, nothing but a verse from the Torah and the right of the strongest.

The reaction was proportionate to the scandal: a joint statement signed by fifteen Arab and Muslim countries, the OIC, the Arab League, and the Gulf Cooperation Council condemned remarks indicating « that it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab states. »

But Huckabee is not an anomaly. He is the product of a convergence half a century in the making between Christian messianism, Israeli expansionism, and American political opportunism — an ideology that has its founding texts, its electoral networks, its funding, and which, from Gaza to Tehran, now has its armed wing.

Genesis as a deed of ownership

In the beginning, then, a verse from Genesis. « On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates. » This divine promise, written nearly three millennia ago, has become the most contested deed of ownership in human history.

Another verse completes it: « I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. » For millions of believers, Jewish and Christian alike, these two verses establish a sacred, inalienable right over a stretch of land that encompasses, according to the most expansive readings, nearly the entirety of the Levant.

But the Bible alone does not make a policy. It takes men to transform a verse into a state strategy. And those men have not been lacking.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the independence of Israel. Two days earlier, he had organized a decisive vote: should borders be included in the Declaration? The result: 5 votes to 4 against defining them.

The choice is deliberate. Ben-Gurion owned it: « If we defeat the Arabs and take western Galilee, those areas will become part of the state. Why should we commit to borders that the Arabs don’t accept? » He wrote in his war diaries: « Every schoolchild knows that nothing in history is ever permanently settled. » He would consider this vote one of his greatest political triumphs.

Half a century later, that ambiguity becomes written doctrine. In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser drafted for Netanyahu the report « A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. » The text recommends « containing, destabilizing, and rolling back Syria, » « removing Saddam Hussein from power, » and rejecting « land for peace. »

Its authors are not fringe figures: Perle would go on to chair the Defense Policy Board under George W. Bush; Feith would become Under Secretary of Defense. The Clean Break is a plan for a Greater Israel drafted by Americans who would find themselves, seven years later, at the heart of the war apparatus that invaded Iraq.

Evangelicals: an electoral army in the service of Zion

Evangelical Christians number around 80 million in the United States. Far more numerous than American Jews — approximately 5.8 million adults — and infinitely more mobilized on the issue of Israel

But Greater Israel did not impose itself on Washington through think tanks alone. It found fertile ground in the electoral heartland of America: evangelical Christians. They number around 80 million in the United States. Far more numerous than American Jews — approximately 5.8 million adults — and infinitely more mobilized on the issue of Israel.

According to the Pew Research Center, more than 60% of American evangelicals believe that humanity is living in its final days. Four out of five believe that the creation of Israel in 1948 constitutes the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy (New York Times, October 15, 2023). And according to a 2024 Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll, 64% of white evangelicals considered Israel’s actions in Gaza justified — compared to 32% of the overall American population (Mother Jones, September 2025).

Christian Zionism has a long history. As early as 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared that « the establishment of the nation of Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. » Ronald Reagan went further: in a private conversation with AIPAC director Tom Dine, he confided: « I turn to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I wonder if we are the generation that is going to see that come about. » The leak of that confidence made the front page of the Jerusalem Post.

But it is with the founding of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in 2006 by Pastor John Hagee that Christian Zionism becomes a political machine. CUFI claims more than 10 million members — more than AIPAC and the entire American Jewish adult population combined.

In 2007, before AIPAC, Hagee compared Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president, to Hitler, and called for « a preemptive military strike against Iran. » His theology rests on dispensationalism: the Rapture of the Church, the Great Tribulation, the return of Jesus to Jerusalem. Israel is not a geopolitical ally. It is an eschatological prerequisite. Hagee and his followers have donated more than 100 million dollars to Israeli organizations. The man describes Iran as « the head of the snake in the Middle East. »

Donald Trump understood this before anyone else. In August 2020, he admitted without pretense: « We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals. Evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people. » Every one of Trump’s decisions toward Israel is a signal sent to this electoral base. Netanyahu, for his part, completed the alliance: in 2017, before the annual CUFI conference, he declared that evangelical Christians were « Israel’s greatest allies. »

When myths arm bombs

Messianism has never been the exclusive domain of Texan preachers. In Israel, it has permeated political discourse since the founding of the state. But what has changed is its translation into action, and its synchronization on both sides of the Atlantic. In Jewish tradition, Amalek is the archetypal enemy: the nation that attacked the Hebrews as they left Egypt by targeting the most vulnerable — women, children, the elderly.

In the Old Testament, the Book of Samuel commands its total extermination: « Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants. » For centuries, the figure of Amalek has served as a metaphor for the existential enemies of the Jewish people — up to and including the Nazis, whom rabbinical tradition designates as their spiritual heirs.

On October 28, 2023, as the ground offensive on Gaza begins, Benjamin Netanyahu invokes this memory before IDF soldiers: « Remember what Amalek did to you, says our Holy Bible. » On November 3, he repeats the same reference in a letter to the troops. In December, soldiers are filmed singing a hymn calling to « wipe out the seed of Amalek. »

South Africa would cite these references in its genocide complaint before the International Court of Justice. But the distinction between memory and battle cry blurs when that same Netanyahu, in March 2026, equates Iran with Amalek on the eve of the strikes: « We remember — and we act. »

On the American side, theology follows the missiles. According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, more than a hundred service members have reported, since Operation « Epic Fury » (February 28, 2026), commanders citing the Book of Revelation and claiming that « President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran and trigger Armageddon. »

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends a weekly Bible study at the White House led by Pastor Ralph Drollinger, who teaches that « God always blesses Israel’s allies and curses its enemies. »

Other religious myths are exploited by American and Israeli leaders. Gog and Magog — Ya’juj and Ma’juj in the Islamic tradition — designate a vast coalition of nations destined to invade Israel in the « last days. » The text names Gog’s allies: Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth-Togarmah. Evangelical exegetes have long translated these into contemporary geopolitics: Persia is Iran; Cush, Sudan; Put, Libya; Gomer and Beth-Togarmah, Turkey; Magog and Rosh, Russia.

According to the narrative, this coalition encircles Israel, but God intervenes to destroy it with fire, hail, and brimstone, revealing his power to the nations. For evangelicals, this war immediately precedes the Great Tribulation (a sea of suffering descends upon the earth to prepare for the return of the Messiah) and the Second Coming of Christ. This is no longer seminary theology. It is the interpretive framework through which millions of Americans — and sitting political officials — are deciphering the strikes on Tehran.

Funding the Promised Land: dollars for the settlements

Evangelical support does not stop at prayers and ballots. It materializes in cold, hard cash

Evangelical support does not stop at prayers and ballots. It materializes in cold, hard cash. According to an investigation by Haaretz published in December 2018, eleven evangelical organizations injected between 50 and 65 million dollars over ten years into settlement projects in the West Bank — and that figure does not include services provided free of charge.

HaYovel, an American organization, sent 1,700 volunteers over a decade to Har Bracha, near Nablus, to harvest grapes on settler vineyards. The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs pays that same organization 16,000 dollars a year to produce promotional material in support of the settlements abroad.

This former mayor of the settlement of Ariel, in the West Bank, summed up the dynamic in remarks given to Haaretz: « I go to the Christians because the Jewish organizations boycott me. » That says it all.

Greater Israel in power

Asiem El Difraoui, a German-Egyptian Middle East specialist, summed up the Iranian sequence in a phrase in an interview given to the French outlet Le Grand Continent: « We are living in Netanyahu’s world. »

Netanyahu has succeeded in drawing the United States into a forcible reshaping of the Middle East, with the Bible as his compass and evangelicals as his electoral infantry

The Israeli Prime Minister’s greatest strategic victory did not take place in Tehran, but in Washington. Netanyahu has achieved what the neoconservatives of the Clean Break had theorized in 1996: drawing the United States into a forcible reshaping of the Middle East, with the Bible as his compass and evangelicals as his electoral infantry.

For the millions of American Christian Zionists, the question is not whether this war serves the interests of the United States. The question is whether it hastens the return of Christ. Supporting Israel means fulfilling the prophecy and securing one’s place in paradise.

The alliance is not merely strategic — it aims at the salvation of the soul. Mike Huckabee is not an aberration. He is the finished product of half a century of convergence between Christian messianism, Israeli expansionism, and American political opportunism.

When the United States Ambassador to Israel tells millions of viewers that « it would be good if they took it all, » he is not slipping up. He is saying out loud what millions of Americans believe, what hundreds of millions of dollars are funding, and what the bombs, from Gaza to Tehran, are in the process of carrying out. Greater Israel is no longer a preacher’s utopia. It is a foreign policy.

Military strikes, diplomatic tensions, surging oil prices, disrupted shipping lanes, financial markets under pressure… The war between Iran, Israel, and the United States is already redrawing global geopolitical and economic balances.

Why Morocco is condemning it… pic.twitter.com/O8sCIXvGPP

— TelQuel (@TelQuelOfficiel) March 10, 2026

Written in French by Yassine Majdi, edited in English by Eric Nielson