@
Tammylee14 King David and his eight wives lived and died under Old Testament rules, making burnt offerings multiple times, and probably imposing silence on women. We live under New Testament rules. Regarding prayers, perhaps the Pope was referring to prayers like the following.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ... asked Americans to “take a knee and pray to Jesus for the success in the Middle East . . . that the wicked souls be delivered to eternal damnation”.
Praying for someone's
“eternal damnation.” Hegseth really said that. Publicly. Christianity's goal is to
save everyone. To my thinking it is literally playing God to try to direct who gets what fate.
Now lets touch on who kindled strife and settled strife between Iran & the US.
(1) In Aug 1953, the CIA Operation Ajax overthrew the existing prime minister and installed the (US friendly) 1st Shah Pahlavi, incurring about 300 Iranian deaths. Should Iran interpret that overthrow as an act of war?
(2) In Nov 1979, Iranians overthrew the 2nd Shah Pahlavi and took 66 Americans hostage, holding 52 of them for more than a year. No Americans were killed though eight died in an aborted rescue attempt. Should the US interpret that hostage taking as an act of war?
(3) In July 2015, Obama made a treaty known as the JCPOA, signed by US, Iran, and 5 other nuclear powers. Under the treaty deal, Iran agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons and to allow continuous monitoring of its compliance in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. For three years, Iran kept to the rules as shown in quarterly reports, see
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/iaea-and-iran-iaea-board-reportsThe JCPOA treaty ended Iran's nuclear threat. Iran agreed to reduce its enriched uranium stockpile by 98% and cap enrichment at 3.67% for 15 years among many other treaty terms. This was an act of settling strife.
In short, Obama
solved the Iran nuclear issue.
(4) In May 2018 tRump, saying he could make a "better deal," blew up the JCPOA treaty and re-imposed US sanctions. In response, Iran began digging deeper tunnels and enriching uranium again. Should Iran interpret blowing up the treaty as an act of war? BTW, tRump never did make any other deal with Iran.
In short, tRump
un-solved the Iran nuclear issue.
(5) 2023-2024: ChatGPT tells you that at least 3 US service members were killed by "Iranian forces or their proxies." Is that an act of war? I will point out here that tRump didn't cite any soldiers' deaths in his justification for the 900 strikes against Iran that he launched on Feb 28 2026.
(6) In June 2025, tRump dropped bunker buster bombs on Iran's enrichment tunnels. There was no known loss of life, and tRump reported
"Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News" Source: The White House. Date: June 25, 2025. Should Iran interpret that bombing as an act of war?
(7) Feb 28 2026, tRump launched 900 strikes against Iran including a strike on a girls' school in Minab that killed over 170 people, many of them children. That is certainly an act of war. tRump's justification reads as follows: 2026-03-10:
“The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return, and the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco also involved, I thought they were going to attack us.”
tRump's stated justification for starting the war had nothing to to with what ChatGPT mentioned. tRump's justification was that he
thought Iran might be close to having capabilities that concerned him. However,
U.S. Intelligence Saw No Change in Iran’s Missile Capabilities Before War
On Wednesday, the director of national intelligence and C.I.A. director contradicted one of the justifications the Trump administration had given for its attacks on Iran.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/world/middleeast/tulsi-gabbard-senate-testimony-iran-war.htmlAI summary of the above linked articleOn March 18, 2026, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment program following 2025 U.S. strikes, directly contradicting President Trump's assertion that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat. Gabbard stated that the enrichment capabilities were "obliterated" and that Iran had not made efforts to rebuild them