For hardline Shiite ideologues from Tehran to Dearborn to northern Virginia, the focus of America’s war on Iran is the arrival of the Mahdi, Islam’s awaited messianic figure, whose reappearance, they believe, will be preceded by the emergence of the Dajjal — Islam’s version of the Antichrist. And the name they attach to the Dajjal is Donald Trump.
This is being preached on American soil, in American cities, to American children. Sara Ghorbani, a writer and women’s rights activist who fled Iran’s theocratic rule in 2010, stated, “ “We’re fighting an evil that the world doesn’t truly comprehend in its belief that it has a divine mandate to usher in a day of apocalypse,” adding, “Our brave people in Iran are fighting a tyranny that believes it is God’s salvation for this earth when, in fact, it is a cruel and ungodly regime that is actually their own prophecy of Dajjal.”
Al-Masih ad-Dajjal — literally “the deceitful messiah” — is Islam’s supreme figure of evil in the end times. He does not appear in the Quran by name, but Islamic hadith literature — the collected sayings and traditions attributed to Muhammad — describes him in vivid detail. He will appear before the Day of Judgment, claim to be the promised messiah, and ultimately declare himself God. He is described in the hadith as blind in one eye: “The Dajjal is blind in one eye, and his eye looks like a bulging grape” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 88, Hadith 245).
He is a master of inversion and illusion. One hadith warns: “The Dajjal will come and he will have water and fire with him. What the people will see as water will burn, and what they see as fire will be cool and sweet water” (Sunan Ibn Majah, Book 36, Hadith 4077). He seduces with wealth, sows chaos, and tests the faith of believers. Another tradition cautions: “Whoever hears of the Dajjal, let him keep away from him. By Allah, a man will come to him thinking himself to be a believer, but will follow him because of the doubts he will raise in his mind” (Sunan Abu Dawood, Book 39, Hadith 4319).
For Western readers, the parallel to the Christian Antichrist is immediate. In Christian eschatology — rooted largely in the books of Revelation and the letters of John — the Antichrist is a deceptive world leader who will rise to power in the last days, demand worship, and wage war against the righteous before being destroyed at Christ’s return. Both figures share core traits: deception, false messianic claims, global reach, and a final defeat. The Dajjal is defeated in Islamic tradition near Lod, Israel — a detail not lost on those watching events in this region.
There is nobody in the contemporary Shiite world more despised than Donald Trump. His “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign devastated the Iranian economy. His administration ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. His full-throated support for Israel makes him, in Shiite eyes, an agent of everything their eschatology warns against. It was only a matter of theological time before he became the Dajjal.
A senior cleric appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader made this explicit in a sermon last year. Seyyed Hassan Ameli, Khamenei’s representative to deliver Friday prayers in the northwestern city of Ardabil, told his congregation: “He is completely one-eyed, and this is a sign of the end times.” Ameli elaborated: “The new US president has a completely one-sided view. He sees the world purely through a materialistic lens and openly declares that America is a business corporation. He covets wealth wherever it exists — whether it’s Middle Eastern oil, Syrian oil, or Ukraine’s minerals.”
The hadith-based case being made in these sermons runs as follows: Trump’s alleged one-sided worldview fulfills the prophecy of the one-eyed Dajjal. His wealth and business empire mirror the hadith that “the Dajjal will come with rivers of water and mountains of bread, and will call the people to his false religion” (Sunan Ibn Majah, Book 36, Hadith 4075). His confrontation with Iran represents the Dajjal‘s assault on the forces of the Mahdi.
Even a Russian military commander has joined this chorus. General Alaudinov, speaking about Iran, declared: “If it were up to me, I would provide them with every weapon at my disposal… to stand alongside them and help repel the ground offensive — this army of the Antichrist Dajjal.”
At a recent Friday sermon at a local Shiite mosque in northern Virginia, an imam closed prayer with an earnest plea: “May Allah destroy all the nonbelievers — or kafiroon or munafiqoon,” using Arabic words that refer to “nonbelievers” and “hypocrites.” He asked for this victory “before the arrival of Imam Mahdi.”
A Fox News Digital investigation observed the sermon and also witnessed a special table of honor in the middle of the mosque’s main prayer hall, featuring framed photos of Khamenei embracing Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, both killed by Israel for orchestrating terrorist attacks.
The mosque itself has a documented history of political activism on behalf of the Iranian regime. Last summer, the Manassas Mosque co-organized a White House protest with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition, CodePink and other far-left groups to support the Iranian regime. At that protest, one demonstrator, wearing a black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarf over her face, carried a flag that read “Labayk ya Mahdi” in Arabic — “At your service, oh, Mahdi.” In Farsi, Arabic and English, the flag also carried the message, “I dedicate every single of my steps to your reappearance.”
After the recent Friday service, two community leaders at the Manassas mosque declined to speak for attribution but told Fox News Digital that the rhetoric of destroying “nonbelievers” and the photos of Khamenei and the terrorist group leaders are meant to challenge “injustice” before the Mahdi appears. That is the institutional defense: mass prayers for the destruction of nonbelievers are framed as social justice activism in anticipation of a messianic arrival.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about this theological dynamic in early February, noting that Iran’s leaders are guided not merely by geopolitics and national security considerations, but by “pure theology.” “We have to understand that Iran ultimately is governed, and its decisions are governed by Shiite clerics — radical Shiite clerics — who make policy decisions on the basis of pure theology,” Rubio said.
On March 1, the Hadi Institute in Dearborn held a memorial service for Khamenei, referring to him as the “great leader of our time.” The event was recorded and went viral after being shared by the nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
During the event, poet and lawyer Hassan Salamey recited poetry claiming that while it may appear that Zionist Jews led the attack on Khamenei, it was actually Satan “leading their camp.” He asserted that whether the “stooge” in the Oval Office is Republican or Democrat, the United States was built for and by the “Epstein Class.” Salamey added that Americans live on “stolen land” controlled by “devil-worshiping Freemasons,” cited conspiracy theories about the “one-eyed devil” on the U.S. dollar, and explicitly called the Statue of Liberty “Lucifer, the demonic bearer holding a torch of light.” The Dajjal theology and the “one-eyed devil” on American currency is seen as being explicitly described in the hadith description of the one-eyed deceiver. America itself and the Dajjal‘s domain.
Usama Abdulghani, spiritual leader of the Hadi Institute and its affiliated Hadi Montessori early childhood school, offered condolences and congratulations to Khamenei’s memory for achieving “this ultimate honor” after “86 years of jihad in the way of Allah.” He expressed particular appreciation to the mothers who brought their young children to the memorial, “so that our children would grow up with this culture, where we remember our martyrs, and we are not ashamed of them.”
In an upcoming report, “The Ayatollahs’ Influence Network in the United States,” the National Union for Democracy in Iran concludes that the Islamic Republic spreads “Tehran’s messaging” through a network of U.S. institutions it supports — pitting Trump as the Dajjal fighting defenders of the Mahdi, like Khamenei and now his successors.
“What we’re seeing is years of deliberate investment by the Islamic Republic inside the United States,” Ghalili told Fox News Digital. “This is happening on American soil, and it’s just another way in which the regime poses a direct threat to the United States — this time not with missiles but through infiltration.”
Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency has also been repeating the end-times narrative, quoting Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem claiming that the regime is the “government of Imam Mahdi” and that its anti-U.S. “resistance is the path to hastening his reappearance.” After war broke out, pro-regime chats on messaging platforms like Telegram filled with prayers awaiting “the arrival” of Mahdi. “We need Al Mahdi… His return with Jesus will be the final win permanently,” one read.
In Twelver Shi’ism — the dominant form of Shiite Islam, practiced in Iran — the Mahdi is the 12th Imam, a direct descendant of Muhammad who went into occultation (divine hiding) in the 9th century CE and is expected to return to establish a global Islamic caliphate. The Dajjal‘s appearance is one of the key signs of the Mahdi‘s imminent return.
A Shiite hadith attributed to Muhammad states: “Whoever denies al-Mahdi has denied God, and whoever accepts al-Dajjal has denied God.” The theological stakes could not be higher. Before the Mahdi‘s reappearance, Islamic tradition holds, the world will descend into total moral collapse: immorality and ignorance will be universal, the Quran will be forgotten, and religion will be abandoned. Then come the plagues, earthquakes, floods, and wars.
According to Islamic eschatology in both Sunni and Shiite traditions, the sequence of events unfolds as follows: The Mahdi will emerge and lead his army from modern-day Iran toward Damascus, Syria. At the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Jesus — whom Islam holds did not die on the cross but was raised to heaven and will return — will descend and pray behind the Mahdi, submitting to his leadership. The combined forces will then march to defeat the Dajjal in a final battle, with his death occurring near Lod, Israel.
Jesus figures prominently in Islamic eschatology but is not the Jesus of Christian faith. In this Islamic framework, Jesus returns not as the divine Son of God but as a Muslim prophet who was never crucified. His mission upon return is to abolish the Christian cross, kill the pig, and call all Christians to convert to Islam. Those who refuse face death. He will ultimately die a natural death and be buried in Medina, next to Muhammad. This is the “final win permanently” that pro-regime Telegram users were celebrating as bombs fell.
Whether Trump is or is not the Dajjal is irrelevant to the Hebrew Bible’s framework. What matters is that Lod — the very city where Islamic tradition says the Dajjal will be killed — is inside Israel. The final battle of Islamic eschatology is fought on Jewish land. Even Islam’s own end-times theology cannot escape the centrality of the land God gave to the Jewish people.
Iran’s mullahs convinced themselves they were the vanguard of the Mahdi. They are now burying their dead. History is not done making its point.
