[nick_lt]

I dont really buy the "this is all Evangelical Christians and their sick theology" angle

To me this is about power, religion is branding and the real decisions follow money, media control, and long‑term interests. Not every billionaire has to love trump and just enough of them have to be okay with him because he delivers tax cuts and deregulation

On the Middle East part: these aren't just random countries tied to some prophecy, theyre core US allies. If the US misplays this and loses them, thats a huge hit to US leverage

[jfengel]

It's both. The Republican party (like all parties) is made up of groups that barely tolerate each other. In this case, you have a bunch of Evangelical theocrats and a bunch of atheist technocrats. They tolerate each other because they both really despise progressives, but once the progressives are completely defeated they'll turn on each other.

The theocrats want to bring about Armageddon. It's not clear if the technocrats are merely not objecting to it, or if they have some other goal in mind. Perhaps they want to funnel money to themselves via the defense sector, or perhaps they want to show off America's might. It may just be supporting one of our few remaining allies, who considers Iran a threat but hasn't risked an all-out war.

I'd like to think that, if this goes badly, then the theocrats and technocrats will blame each other for doing something costly. But I'm sure they'll just blame progressives, which always seems to suffice, regardless of how absurd the explanation is.