Twelver Shi’a Islam, the Mahdi, and the Iranian regime’s existential war against Israel – Why Iran seeks to destroy the Jewish nation

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a Shi’a Muslim government. While it is not the only Shi’a Muslim majority country, it is the only one with a Shi’a theocratic government based on the Islamic Revolutionary philosophy of its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

It is also a government that has attempted to spread its political and religious ideology outward – to other Shi’a regions, to Sunni Muslim nations, and to the rest of the world as a means of ensuring the survival of its Islamic revolutionary philosophy.

Most Shi’ites today are Twelver Shi’ites, believing in the return of the Hidden (12th) Imam, who will bring about the institution of a perfect, incorrupt Islamic government. 

Many Muslims believe in the coming of the Mahdi, a messianic figure in both of the two main branches of Islam: Sunni and Shi’a. For most Sunni Muslims, the Mahdi is not theologically important, but occupies a larger role in popular beliefs about the end of time. However, for Twelver Shi’ism, the Mahdi is identified with the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan – better known as Muhammad al-Mahdi. He is said to be the son of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari (who died in  874). 

Al-Mahdi is believed to have descended from the prophet Muhammad’s bloodline, descended through Ali –Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law by his marriage to the prophet’s daughter, Fatima. Shi’a Muslims believe that the Mahdi is in ghaybah (occultation) – a state of hiddenness – and will be revealed near the end of time. 

For Twelver Shi’ism, it is the Mahdi who will finally ensure the triumph of Shi’a Islam as the true religion, will defeat the oppressors of Muslims, and bring justice to the earth. They believe that his coming will precede a final battle, similar to the New Testament Battle of Armageddon, in which the Mahdi and his forces will defeat the forces of evil. 

Until that time, all governments, including the governments of other Islamic countries, are considered unjust, corrupt, and un-Islamic. In order to escape the claim that the Islamic Republic is itself unjust, corrupt, and un-Islamic, the founding supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, revived and expanded the Shi’a teaching of velayat-e faqih (guardianship by Islamic jurists). 

Khomeini asserted that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic could serve as the Nayeb-e Imam – the deputy of the 12th Imam, whom Shi’a Muslims believe to be the Mahdi.

However, not all ayatollahs accept Khomeini’s interpretation, which has caused problems for Iran in its attempt to be not only protector and guardian of Shi’a Islam, but it’s primary interpreter. 

Because adherents to Shi’a Islam choose a living ayatollah to be their source of emulation, functioning almost like a personal pope – to borrow a Catholic idea – the Iranian regime has invested in spreading its version of Shi’a Islam in countries with Shi’a populations, and in outreach programs in countries with limited Islamic presence. This is an effort to ensure that the Supreme Leader is held up as the leading ayatollah, and that his interpretation of Twelver Shi’ism is the dominant one. 

The development of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is part of this effort. Unlike the Iranian army, whose task is to defend the borders of Iran, the IRGC is dedicated to protecting the Shi’a clergy in Iran and elsewhere, as well as advancing the Islamic Revolution in Iran and in other countries. 

According to Saeid Golkar and Kasra Aarabi, researchers with the Middle East Institute, “Indoctrination has become an increasing focal point in the Guard. Khamenei and his hardline circle have sought to nurture a more radical IRGC generation by dedicating more time to ideological indoctrination of its members.” 

The IRGC system of indoctrination is based on the concepts of velayat-e faqih (guardianship by Islamic jurists), the Alavi and Ashuri doctrines of loyalty to leadership (Alavi) and confrontation of oppressors (Ashuri), as well as the concept of Mahdism (the belief in the Islamic Messiah figure called the Mahdi). 

In their work, “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Rising Cult of Mahdism,” Golkar and Aarabi wrote, “The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini would fundamentally change the Shi’a political doctrine and Mahdism.” 

Khomeini centralized the power of the government in the hands of the clerics, especially in the hands of a supreme leader, who would function as the deputy or steward of the Twelfth Imam until his reappearance. Khomeini also changed Mahdism from a quietist belief – where the faithful passively awaited the Mahdi’s arrival – into an activist one, where the true believers could help the Mahdi to return. 

“Rather than silently waiting for the 12th Imam’s return, Khomeini argued, the 12th Imam was waiting for Shi’a Muslims to prepare the ground for his arrival,” Golkar and Aarabi wrote. “Shi’a Muslims, in turn, had to be politically active and form an Islamic government to prepare for Mahdi’s global revolution.” 

The rise of Ali Khamenei to Supreme Leader in 1989 led to an increase in Mahdism within the government. Khamenei argued that there were five conditions “to lay the ground for the 12th Imam’s return: an Islamic Revolution, an Islamic regime, an Islamic government, an Islamic society, and an Islamic civilization.” 

According to Khamenei, Iran had accomplished the first two stages but must fulfill the remaining three in order to pave the way for the Mahdi’s return. The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, strongly backed by Khamenei, was intended to fulfill the third condition: the establishment of a fully Islamic government. This, in turn, was seen as a necessary step toward achieving the fourth and fifth conditions for the Mahdi’s return.

Following unrest after apparently rigged elections in 2009, Khamenei’s close circle of clerics and leaders became even more fervent in their support for and proclamation of Mahdism. They also began to view the IRGC as a means of achieving the goal of the Mahdi’s return. 

In 2012, Hojatoleslam Ali Saeedi, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the IRGC, said in a speech: “The IRGC is one of the tools for paving the way for the emergence of the Imam of the Age [Mahdi] in the field of a regional and international awakening, and the IRGC Quds Force plays the primary role in this regard.” 

In the same speech, Saeedi described the presence of the United States in Iraq as a barrier to the reappearance of the Mahdi, asserting that the “Middle East must change.” 

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria during the so-called Arab Spring was seen as proof that the age of the Mahdi was approaching, as Syria, and especially Damascus, play a significant role in the Hadith related to the Mahdi. In particular, Shi’a Hadith speak of a “sedition” that will take place in Syria before the coming of the Mahdi, which would see “an evil tyrant and descendent of the Sunni Umayyad caliphs” come to power in the region. 

The expansion of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria during this time was directly related to those beliefs. 

However, the belief in the Mahdi became increasingly tied to the fight against “the Little Satan” – Israel. 

Ali Saeedi said that the current era is the final period of history before the Mahdi’s return. He said the world is divided between “the ‘will of the essence of transcendence’ and ‘the arrogant powers.’ The former – according to Saeedi – is led by ‘the people and the leadership of Iran’ and the latter include ‘Zionism, Wahhabi Zionism, and Christian Zionism.’” 

In May 2022, Golkar and Aarabi wrote, “The ideological belief that the eradication of Israel is a necessary step for the reappearance of the 12th Imam is increasingly being mainstreamed in the IRGC.” 

During a speech to the IRGC’s Basij members in 2015, Cleric Mehdi Taeb, commander of the Ammar Headquarters, said, “Observers must remove the obstacles to the emergence of the Imam of the Age, the most important of which is the existence of the usurper regime of Israel.” 

Many Twelver Shi’a clerics teach that the Muslim world must achieve dominance under Islamic rule for the Mahdi to return. An important component is the recapture of previously Muslim dominated lands – especially the land of Israel, which was under Muslim rule for centuries. 

In addition to confronting Sunni militias in Syria, the belief that Israel must be defeated before the Mahdi’s return motivated the deployment of Quds Force soldiers to Syria. This strategy also involved leveraging IRGC proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis – to encircle and pressure Israel. 

Even the name chosen by Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023 invasion – “Al-Aqsa Flood” – refers to the “flood of blood” predicted by some of religious texts as the enemies of the Mahdi and Islam are eliminated before the Last Day. 

Both the Iranian regime and Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza share a religious belief that the destruction of Israel and all Jews must precede the final coming of the Last Day and the triumph of Islam. Thus, despite their inherent religious disputes, the two have partnered to work towards the elimination of the Israel and the Jewish people, believing that the Mahdi will settle their own religious dispute afterwards. 

The focus of the Islamic Republic and its private army – the IRGC – on the destruction of Israel and the Jews also explains why Israel has consistently highlighted the Iranian regime as its number one existential threat in the region – and why it took matters into its own hands with Operation Rising Lion. 

As Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter recently stated, “You know, for us the most important lesson of the Holocaust is that when somebody says they intend to destroy you, believe him. So we take the ayatollah without a patronizing attitude. We take him at face value.”