Plumes of smoke from two simultaneous strikes rise over Tehran, Iran, on 2 March 2026. Photograph: Mohsen Ganji/AP
Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify war
US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force.
One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”.
“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added.
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An unidentified man shouts anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans while standing in front of a destroyed building near a police station in Tehran, Iran, on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Before more children are burned alive or buried under rubble, this lawless war must end.”
Experts on international law throughout the world have concluded that the unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran that began on Saturday is illegal.
Adil Ahmad Haque, a Rutgers Law School professor, wrote an analysis for Just Security published on Monday that called the attacks by the US and Israel a “manifest violation of the United Nations Charter,” which “prohibits the use of force against another State unless that use of force is authorized by the UN Security Council or is a necessary and proportionate act of individual or collective self-defense in response to an armed attack.”
Haque also argued that Iran, in responding to the attacks, violated the UN Charter by launching drone strikes against US allies throughout the Middle East, even though none of those nations had taken part in the US-Israeli operations.
“The United States, Israel, and Iran, have each violated international law,” Haque concluded. “Hundreds of civilians have paid the price. Before more children are burned alive or buried under rubble, this lawless war must end.”
Marko Milanovic, a University of Reading School of Law professor, wrote at the blog of the European Journal of International Law that the US-Israeli strikes are “manifestly illegal” and “as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have.”
Milanovic also said that, leaving legality aside, the war would likely create a humanitarian disaster.
“Maybe, maybe, something good will come out of this… although I very much doubt it,” he wrote. “It is far more likely that many innocent people are about to die, in Iran and possibly in Israel, and that their deaths will be for nothing.”
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) condemned the attacks on Iran as illegal under international law and dismissed any claims by US and Israel that they were necessary to liberate Iranians from a tyrannical government.
“Claims that launching an unprovoked and illegal attack is about defending human rights ring hollow,” CIEL wrote, “when military strikes have already killed hundreds of civilians and intensified suffering as violence escalates—particularly when those same human rights are flagrantly violated by the US and by Israel, both domestically and abroad. Bombs do not yield peace, democracy, climate justice, or human rights.”
Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard described the US-Israeli attack as “a grave threat to multilateralism and to the integrity of the international legal order.”
Callamard also said the international community needed “to intensify diplomatic efforts to prevent further military escalation to avert additional civilian harm, and halt any further crimes under international law against populations who have already endured decades of repression.”
Human rights organization DAWNdemanded that the UN General Assembly call an emergency session to declare the Iran attack a violation of the UN Charter.
Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, said that the war is also illegal under the US Constitution, which states that the US Congress has the power to declare war.
“This war is patently illegal,” Shakir said, “and it must be stopped.”
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Former Labour Party leader co-founder and leader, Jeremy Corbyn, takes part in the protest against the war with Iran in Parliament Square, as the USA and Israel launch attacks on Iran. Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps.”
As UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer allows British bases to be used as part of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the former leader of his Labour Party says he’s making the same mistake that another Labour PM made 23 years ago.
Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist member of Parliament who led Labour from 2015 to 2020, said on Tuesday that Starmer was “echoing Tony Blair’s obedience to Washington”, referring to the then-prime minister’s decision in 2003 to join US President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
“Ignoring the wisdom of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery. More than a million Iraqi men, women, and children paid the price.” Corbyn wrote in a Tuesday piece for the democratic socialist publication Tribune.
Infamously pledging to Bush, “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair helped to promote the false claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. And despite a lack of support from the United Nations, he joined Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” committing 46,000 British troops to the war.
“This was the last time a Labour prime minister blindly backed the wishes of the US and its warmongering president,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps and drag us into a catastrophic, illegal war.”
Unlike Bush, US President Donald Trump has not yet put boots on the ground in Iran, instead waging a destructive campaign of aerial bombings and missile strikes that have taken out the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian officials.
As of Monday, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based monitor of human rights in Iran, reported that at least 742 civilians had been killed since Saturday by US and Israeli attacks, with nearly 1,000 injured and more than 600 deaths still under review.
While Starmer has stressed that the UK “had no role” in launching the war, he has lent credence to the questionable case the US and Israel have made to justify it, including emphasizing that Iran “must never have nuclear weapons.”
Iran has always contended its nuclear program was not for military purposes, and it had no desire to produce a nuclear weapon. Prior to Saturday’s strikes, reports indicated that Iranian negotiators had offered to give up the nation’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium.
And though he has accused Iran of launching “indiscriminate strikes” across the Gulf, Starmer has been reticent to criticize similar actions by the US and Israel, which have had vastly larger death tolls, including the bombing of a girls’ school that reportedly killed 165 people, most of them girls between ages 7 and 12, and attacks on several hospitals.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says that “Britain will not” join forces with strikes on Iran carried out by the US and Israel.
The UK is allowing American forces to use its bases in the region to help launch attacks, but stresses the UK military will only act defensively. pic.twitter.com/8fqPOxPLMp
One day after the first strikes were conducted, and following mounting pressure from Trump, Starmer announced that he’d given the US approval for “specific, limited defensive” use of three Royal Air Force (RAF) bases—Fairford in England, Akrotiri in Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—in order to destroy Iran’s missiles “at source” after a drone hit Akrotiri, causing minimal damage.
However, Starmer continued to claim that the UK had learned the “mistakes of Iraq,” and “will not join offensive action now.”
Corbyn said that Starmer’s insistence that bases would only be used “defensively” was merely “meaningless vocabulary that reveals Starmer’s contempt for the intelligence of the British people.”
In Parliament on Monday, Starmer said that “the use of the bases is to allow the US to use its ability to take out the ability of Iran to launch the attacks in the first place.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday used similar reasoning to justify launching the war, explaining that Iran was likely to retaliate against a planned Israeli attack and that it therefore posed an “imminent threat” to US personnel even though that threat was contingent on Israel attacking first.
Corbyn described the idea of a “preemptive strike” as a contradiction in terms. “Under this convoluted reasoning,” he said, “almost any attack on anybody can be classified as a defensive measure. Starmer’s words are Newspeak—and cannot shield his government from complicity in the devastation ahead.”
Mark my words: Starmer’s decision to drag Britain into another illegal war will prove to be a catastrophic, historic mistake. pic.twitter.com/2iSFpnDHdw
Like in the United States, the British public has expressed low support for American and Israeli actions against Iran. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 49% disapprove of US military action, compared to 28% who support it. Fewer than 1 in 5 Labour voters said they supported it.
Voters also said they oppose their government’s involvement. Compared with just 32% of Brits who said they supported letting the US use British bases, 50% said they opposed it.
“For too long, Britain has blindly followed the US as it indulges in disastrous imperial fantasies,” Corbyn said, noting the UK’s continued support for Israel over two years of US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.
Corbyn is now an independent MP who co-founded a new political party after being thrown out of Labour in 2020 over dubious accusations of antisemitism, which he has alleged stem from his strong criticism of Israel.
“It’s time to forge a different path. Now is not the time to try to rescue a ‘special relationship’ characterised by impunity, genocide, and war,” he said. “Now is the time to forge an independent foreign policy based on international law and peace.”
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US Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference on US military action in Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on March 2, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are a rogue murder state now, and positively proud of it,” said one historian.
US Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal on Monday of what he called “stupid rules of engagement” in the illegal war against Iran amounted to an invitation for American and allied forces to commit war crimes, human rights organizations and other critics warned.
Hegseth’s remarks came during a press conference alongside the top US general, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine. The Pentagon chief boasted that the US is “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” “all on our terms with maximum authorities,” unbound by “stupid rules of engagement,” and undeterred by “what so-called international institutions say”—an apparent reference to the United Nations.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement Monday that “these remarks are concerning in light of Hegseth’s actions in the past year that have weakened US military posts and mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war.”
“Rules of engagement are official military directives that tell military forces when, where, how, and against whom force may be used. They must always be in accordance with the laws of war,” said HRW. “Hegseth abolished ‘civilian environment teams’ and other mechanisms intended to limit harm to civilians during operations. The 2026 National Defense Strategy omitted references to civilian protection and the Defense Department rolled back restrictions on its use of antipersonnel landmines and moved ahead with cluster munitions procurement despite these weapons’ foreseeable immediate and long-term harm to civilians.”
“Human Rights Watch will endeavor to assess whether these Defense Department actions unlawfully increase the risk of harm to civilians during US military operations,” the group added. “US civilian and military officials should reaffirm US compliance with the laws of war and restore the personnel and oversight structures that help protect civilians during armed conflict.”
Historian Seth Cotlar wrote on social media that Hegseth’s comments underscored that “we are a rogue murder state now, and positively proud of it.”
The Pentagon chief’s remarks came days after a girls’ school in Iran was bombed, allegedly by US or Israeli forces. The US Central Command said it was “looking into” the attack, which killed 165 people—most of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12. The Guardiannotes that the school was “adjacent to a cluster of buildings that form the local Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) barracks and support buildings.”
An Al Jazeerainvestigation concluded the school strike was likely “deliberate.”
When Hegseth says "no stupid rules of engagement," this is what he means.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement over the weekend that “any deliberate attack on a school or on civilians, as well as any indiscriminate or disproportionate attack that violates the principles of distinction and proportionality, constitutes a grave breach and may amount to a war crime where intent to target the school is established or where the attack is indiscriminate or disproportionate.”
Hegseth has previously derided limitations on US troops’ conduct overseas as “stupid.” During remarks to hundreds of generals last year, the Pentagon chief declared that we “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.”
“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy,” Hegseth said at the time. “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”
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