The War Against Iran: God, Death and Time

Military superiority alone cannot determine the outcome of war with Iran. Washington needs to understand that purposeful war requires more than military threats and coercive rhetoric. No matter how vigorously President Donald Trump may warn that “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight”,[i] Tehran will remain fixed on its nuclear military objectives. Under no circumstances would it be moved by threats of “obliteration.”[ii]

That such Iranian determination will be rational in military strategic terms should be unsurprising. Less well understood is the extent to which the Islamic Republic would be acting according to considerations of God, Death and Time. It follows that unless pertinent U.S. decision-makers could decipher these considerations, American planning for a prolonged war with Iran could misjudge Iranian responses.

Among other things, the American president’s fluctuating deadlines risk misunderstanding Iran’s strategic calculus. Iran’s military decision-makers, secular as well as religious, may not share American assumptions about sacrifice and the temporal horizons of conflict.[iii]

Even if only in varying degrees, these leaders embrace religious concepts of sacrifice and martyrdom and could complicate American coercive calculations. Ironically, even militarily successful U.S. strikes could stiffen Iranian resolve and harden Iran’s dedication to “sacred time.” Unlike clock-time, “sacred time” is subjectively determined, providing an analytical framework for understanding religiously informed conceptions of sacrifice, martyrdom and historical continuity.

To meaningfully affect Iranian government behaviors, the U.S. president will need to understand Iran’s strategic background from the “inside.” Iranian leaders may resist coercive threats framed solely in secular, American calculations of cost and time.[iv] Public humiliation and maximalist demands could further reduce Tehran’s political room for compromise.

Viewed through the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ time used here, Trump’s time-centred threats of ‘obliteration’ may have less coercive effect than Washington assumes. Such threats could instead create incentives for escalation. To act rationally, U.S. planners for war with Iran will need more than just a superficial acquaintance with Iranian strategic preferences.

American national security planners should not assume that Iranian decision-makers evaluate the duration and costs of conflict solely through conventional material calculations. Religious and revolutionary narratives can also shape perceptions of sacrifice, endurance and legitimate resistance. Predictably, whenever President Trump gives Iranian decision-makers tough-sounding deadlines for immediate compliance or “complete surrender,” these decision-makers may prove less responsive than Washington expects. Such demands could strengthen narratives of resistance and martyrdom or accelerate general war hostilities.[v] Publicly humiliating demands may reduce Tehran’s political room for compromise. The relevant question is whether each side’s actions are rational in relation to its own hierarchy of preferences.

Iranian revolutionary ideology has attached substantial political meaning to martyrdom and self-sacrifice, particularly within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.[vi][vii] Such ideas need not imply irrationality. Rather, they can alter the costs that Iranian leaders and military institutions are prepared to bear in pursuit of political and strategic objectives. American and Israeli decision-makers could find Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical lens for understanding this relationship between mortality and time useful: “It is through death,” says the philosopher, “that there is time…”[viii]

Iranian narratives of martyrdom and sacrifice can give political struggle a significance extending beyond immediate military costs or conventional chronological horizons.[ix] Correlatively, especially during periods of acute international crisis, Iran could be expected to display greater patience and resilience than the United States or Israel anticipate. If, as Levinas insists, temporality is contingent on mortality, a prior question will need to be asked: How can the promise of transcending individual mortality influence loyalty to a state, religion or political cause? This question has practical implications for U.S. and Israeli strategy toward Iran.

American strategists should distinguish conventional measures of power from religiously informed conceptions of sacrifice, endurance and political legitimacy. For U.S. strategy, the relevant question is how Iranian revolutionary narratives of struggle and martyrdom affect calculations of sacrifice, endurance and acceptable loss.[x] Such religious narratives need not displace conventional strategic calculation; they may instead shape how costs and the duration of conflict are understood.

In his posthumously published Lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.”[xi] Treitschke’s formulation illustrates how identification with a political community can offer a symbolic form of continuity beyond individual mortality. Iranian revolutionary narratives similarly connect sacrifice to the survival of a larger religious and political community.[xii]

The doctrine of sovereignty assumes that states pursue perceived national interests within an anarchic international system. Religious influences on Iranian strategic culture need not contradict such rational calculation; they can shape the preferences, costs and risks against which Iranian leaders make decisions.[xiii]

Immortality remains a human a recurrent feature of religious and political life. The strategic danger arises when promises of immortality or transcendence become linked to political violence and military sacrifice.

The underpinnings of war reporting from the Middle East are rooted in the relationship between death, time and immortality. Understanding how Iranian strategic culture interprets sacrifice, endurance and time could improve U.S. and Israeli assessments of Iranian resolve and coercive vulnerability.

In Iran, reassuring hopes for personal immortality are contingent on expectations of “sacred time.” In strategic terms, narratives of martyrdom, sacrifice and endurance can therefore strengthen Iranian resolve even in the face of severe military losses. Regarding war against Iran, superiority in high-technology weapon systems may deliver battlefield successes, but it cannot by itself produce meaningful “victory” for the United States. Washington and Jerusalem should not assume that mounting losses will automatically weaken Iranian determination; threats of humiliation or unconditional surrender could instead reinforce narratives of resistance and martyrdom. Going forward, something much subtler will need to guide American and Israeli policy-making. From the standpoint of Iranian leadership ideas, this “something else” is an expanded understanding of how God, Death and Time can shape Tehran’s willingness to sacrifice, endure and continue a prolonged conflict.[xiv]