God v. The State
Whose Laws Decide Future Peace or War? - the case of Iran
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The prediction made in the Foundation Briefing of the Movement for Truth on 24 October 2015 (at page 134) was fulfilled twice in 2024:
In summary, the initial hypothesis of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is adopted: this Plan will lead to war, barring conversion. It is not suggested that Israel has already taken [in 2015] the decision to launch an attack on Iran’s military and other targets. Rather, when the Golden Rule is applied to the material facts of the conflict, this is the result. [Emphasis in the original]
Israeli military attacks were launched in April 2024 in Isfahan, part of Iran’s nuclear programme, and more extensively on Iranian military sites in October. This is also within the timescale envisaged in the Briefing whose focus is theological rather than political.
On 12 November 2024 two open letters are published by the author of the Briefing: one to the Prime Minister of Israel; and the other to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Letter to the Israeli Prime Minister
Dear Sir,
1. Victory
In 1967, Israel comprehensively defeated the Arab armies in a war lasting just Six Days.
In 2023/24, Israel has so far failed to defeat a much smaller, less well-armed and very ill-disciplined group of guerillas/ terrorists in Gaza during more than a year since the 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel.
Instead, the war has spread to other areas and countries.
Q1. Do you still believe that political and military coercion alone will end the conflict or create the climate for peace?
2. Defeat
For it was an Israeli government which, in 2005, gave effect to the policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and thereby gave the opportunity to Hamas, who won the Palestinian elections in January 2006, to take full control of Gaza the following year.
Despite a series of wars from 2006 to 2014, and frequent rocket fire and military incursions at other times, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) failed to anticipate or prevent the Hamas forces invading southern Israel on 7 October 2023 causing widespread death and destruction with the taking of hostages.
This was not the first time. Victory in 1967 led to complacency in October 1973, at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 did succeed in the removal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forces but, unintentionally, spurred the emergence of Hezbollah and an armed conflict there until 2000 and in 2006.
So today Palestinian Arabs pay the price not only for the folly of Hamas initiating the 7 October attacks but the lack of Israeli preparedness for a situation Israeli policy unwittingly permitted. Likewise, the Lebanese and Hezbollah.
Most Palestinian casualties, especially the children, had no responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza. Whatever happens to Hamas, and whatever military victories the IDF may eventually win in this one-sided war, the seeds for future terrorism and war have been sown, barring conversion. Likewise, Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Q2. Is there any other truth than factual truth and the Word of God?
3. The Supremacy of God
The claim that Israel is a Jewish state can be traced back to its founding Declaration on the 5th day of Iyar 5708 (14 May 1948) which refers to ‘Tzur Israel’ (Rock of Israel) – a euphemism for God but vague enough to permit other interpretations. It notes the ‘natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations’. This may be compared with 1 Samuel 8: 4-8 in the Hebrew Scriptures where a similar demand was made (and reluctantly accepted by the prophet) after God made clear to him that the people had not rejected Samuel but rejected the Lord God Himself that He should reign over them. Yet the Declaration also states that the State of Israel ‘…will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.’
Q3. Does Israel acknowledge its ultimate dependence on God or on political and military power? Or, to put it another way, does Israel accept the Golden Rule in international relations so that it may be a blessing for all nations?
If so, let the Court of history be the judge, as the true prophets of Israel all accepted, resting in the hands of God alone.
Conclusion
There is no purely political or military solution to the question of how the Jewish people in Israel are to live peacefully with their Arab and Iranian neighbours. This has been demonstrated historically time after time.
Start taking the rule of God seriously and only then will He permit His chosen people to fulfil their mission to be a blessing for all humanity with Jerusalem – the City of peace – at its centre.
Yours faithfully,
Peter M. Southwood (Dr)
Letter to the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Dear Ayatollah,
1. Victory
In 1979 the Iranian masses, led by Ayatollah Khomeini abroad, overthrew the Shah despite all his military might by relying on the deep religious convictions of the Shi’i inspired by Imam Husayn at Karbala and the return of the Hidden Imam.
Martyrdom not terrorism succeeded.
This Iranian Revolution mirrored the yet greater achievement of the Prophet of Islam, in AH1 – 8, when he united the Arab peoples behind belief in one God, based on the message he had received, and destroyed the idols in Kaba.
Q1. Do you have any reason to doubt that political and military coercion must always be subordinate to true religion, if we are to submit to the will of God?
2. Defeat
Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a ceasefire in line with UN Resolution 598 as a ‘chalice of poison’, in submission to God’s will, bringing the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) – which Iraq had initiated by invasion – to an end.
There had been a steady undermining of the Islamic Republic’s constitutional principle of the supremacy of God in the interests of political expediency. In particular, the Ayatollah’s interpretation of the Absolute Guardianship of the Jurisconsult meant that government has priority over all subsidiary rules of Islam. Thus, Islamic expediency could lead to shari’a law being subordinated but might also require political policy to subordinate itself to the sovereignty of God (as happened in the Iran-Iraq War).
So today Iranians pay the price of the folly of subordinating religious authority to expediency, contrary to the Ayatollah’s own interpretation in 1988 and practice in 1979. The ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel plays to Israel’s political and military strengths and does not address her ambiguity.
The civilian populations of Iran and Lebanon have no responsibility for the Israel-Hezbollah war which, unlike its counterpart in Gaza, is not an Israel-Lebanon war because Hezbollah are a private militia which no sovereign state can tolerate indefinitely. Your people are suffering not (as in 1978/79) for liberation and for God but for expediency and subordination.
Q2. Is there any other truth than factual truth and the Word of God?
3. The Supremacy of God
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran makes unambiguously clear that ‘Absolute sovereignty over the world and man belong to God’ and ‘it is He who has made man master of his own social destiny.’ (Article 56)
Q3. Does, or could, the Community Principle in Article 8 of the Constitution extend the Golden Rule to international relations, consistent with Article 152?
If so, the highest role of Muslim and Jewish scholars is to interpret the Golden Rule for international peace and security by understanding, as far as He permits, how the laws of God are worked out in history.
Conclusion
I wrote to you on 24 October 2015 (Ashura) to warn of an impeding Israeli military attack on your country, barring conversion, despite no such decision having been taken by Israel at that time and even if Iran was in compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA. (That open letter is available here )
On the Iranian response, the Foundation Briefing concluded ‘As Iranians dig deep into their history of persecution and suffering no enemy will ever conquer their submission to the will of God (Islam) just as the Jews know that they have not been conquered. Submit together!’
Yours faithfully,
Peter M. Southwood (Dr)
Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury dated 22 February 2023
The writer is a Christian but to demonstrate that he takes the same attitude to the Kingdom of God, with respect to all three Abrahamic religions, he includes below a letter written to the Archbishop of Canterbury on Ash Wednesday 2023.
He claimed that the Archbishop, on the strength of his recent book entitled ‘The Power of Reconciliation’ (Bloomsbury, 2022), only half believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ and asked him if he had outstayed his mandate? The letter is available here
(He has resigned today - 12 November 2024 - over the handling of a safeguarding scandal.)
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