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Inside Iran’s ruling ideology: How a ‘holy mission’ and messianic doctrine fuel regime extremism
For Mehdi Ghadimi, the ideology behind Iran’s ruling system is not theoretical. It was something he was taught from childhood.
“You were told you are a part a small group chosen by God… to revive God’s religion and fight to defend it,” the Iranian journalist told Fox News Digital, describing the message repeated in schools, mosques and state media.
That early indoctrination, he said, framed the world in stark terms: a divine struggle between good and evil, with Iran’s leadership positioned at the center of a religious mission.
Iran’s ruling system is often described in political terms, but critics and former insiders say its core is far more radical — a belief structure rooted in religious absolutism, messianic expectation and a worldview that leaves little room for compromise.
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As a new generation of commanders rises within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps following recent military blows under Operation Epic Fury, analysts warn that this ideology may become even more entrenched.
Figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Ahmad Vahidi are often cited as part of a cohort shaped by years of conflict in Iraq and across the region — one that sees religion, security and survival as inseparable.
At the center of that worldview is the belief in the Mahdi — a messianic figure in Shiite Islam whose return is expected to usher in a final era of justice after chaos.
Twelver Shiism is the dominant belief for Shias, the Mahdi, identified as the 12th Imam, is alive but hidden and will one day return. Iran’s political system positions the supreme leader as his caretaker.
Critics say that framework gives political authority a religious dimension that can make it difficult to challenge.
“For the mullahs in Iran, the Mahdi idea is less about personal faith and more about power,” said Lisa Daftari, foreign policy analyst and editor-in-chief at The Foreign Desk. “They use it to suggest that the supreme leader’s views are not just political opinions, but carry a kind of divine weight.”
“The system is set up so that disagreeing with the leader can be portrayed as questioning the Hidden Imam himself,” she said.
“That turns ordinary policy debates into something almost untouchable… you’re no longer arguing with a politician, you’re seen as pushing back against a sacred figure.”
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Ghadimi argues that this structure leaves little room for genuine political diversity.
“Groups labeled as ‘moderate,’ ‘reformist,’ or ‘pro-Western’ are created so that the West can negotiate with them,” he said.
“No one within the structure of the Islamic Republic thinks about anything other than defeating the Western world and establishing Islamic dominance globally.”
For Iran expert Daftari, the Mahdi doctrine also provides a flexible justification for policy.
“A lot of insiders know perfectly well that this language is being used strategically,” she said. “The Mahdi story gives the leadership a way to claim moral and religious cover for decisions that are often about preserving the regime or expanding its reach.”
“When they talk about ‘preparing the ground’ for the Mahdi, that phrase can be stretched to cover almost anything — crushing protests, backing militias abroad or asking people to accept more economic pain.”
“This religious framing makes compromise much harder,” she added. “If you convince your base that you are carrying out a holy mission… backing down can be painted as a betrayal of God’s plan.”
Ghadimi said that message is reinforced from childhood, shaping how generations understand their role in society.
In schools, media and mosques, he said, ideology was embedded into everyday life, leaving little space for alternative narratives.
That framing, analysts say, helps explain how the system sustains itself even under pressure.
It also contributes to a worldview in which conflict is not temporary, but part of a larger, ongoing struggle.
“The Islamic government, based on its own interpretation of the Quran, considers itself obligated to enforce Islamic law across the entire world,” Ghadimi told Fox News Digital, adding that the regime “sees itself as the leader of this belief globally.”
“They harbor hatred toward Iranians and Jews, whom they regard as enemies of Islam since its very beginning, and they consider killing them—such as on Oct. 7 and in the recent killings in Iran — to be divinely rewarded acts, much like the beliefs once held by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” he said.
“No one within the structure of the Islamic Republic thinks about anything other than defeating the Western world and establishing Islamic dominance globally,” Ghadimi said.
In that framework, critics say, Iran is not simply pursuing national interests but acting within what it sees as a broader religious mandate.
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Some critics argue that within this framework, violence can take on religious meaning.
“They consider killing them… to be divinely rewarded acts,” Ghadimi said.
Still, analysts say the combination of messianic belief and absolutist ideology creates a system in which confrontation is not only expected, but justified.
An Iranian official rejected those characterizations and warned that economic collapse and destruction caused by war could drive long-term resentment.
“If a country is turned into ruins, poverty spreads. Out of such poverty comes hatred, resentment and a desire for revenge, and this cycle of hostility can continue for years. It is not correct to think that everything will simply end the day after a ceasefire. Even if there were no hostile government left in place, people within society who have lost everything may still be driven to seek retribution.”
For Ghadimi, the issue is not just how Iran behaves, but how it understands itself.
If the system is rooted in a belief that blends religion, power and mission, critics say, then policies like repression at home and confrontation abroad may not be temporary tactics but structural features.
And if moderation within that system is limited, as some argue, then the challenge for policymakers is not simply negotiation, but understanding the ideology that drives it.
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Michigan woman arrested for allegedly starving, torturing disabled sister-in-law she locked in basement
A Michigan woman was arrested and hit with felony charges after she allegedly kept her disabled sister-in-law locked in a basement for two years, where she nearly starved the victim to death and blasted a radio non-stop.
Tasha Beamon, 48, was charged with vulnerable adult abuse and unlawful imprisonment.
The victim managed to escape the basement and broke a neighbor’s window on March 15 as she sought to enter the home, alert police and flee captivity, according to MLive.
The neighbor called 911 and the victim told police that Beamon, the wife of the 58-year-old victim’s late brother, was holding her captive in the Saginaw home’s basement for two years before she found a way to free herself.
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“She told officers she was not fed very often and that she didn’t have any access to water,” Saginaw Police Detective Sgt. Jeff Doud told the outlet.
The victim said Beamon had kept her on an old mattress since March 2024 with a nearby radio constantly blaring.
Police went to Beamon’s house and observed a lock on the basement door, a mattress on the floor and a radio playing loudly. Police also said there was a 5-gallon bucket of urine in the basement.
“Usually, somebody was there. She didn’t believe anyone was home at the time, so she was able to force a door open and escape,” Doud said.
Emergency responders transported the woman to a hospital, where she was treated for severe malnourishment. Hospital staff told police the woman would likely die if she were discharged.
The neighbor told ABC 12 that he was shocked to find the victim suddenly in his living room with a metal pipe “almost as big as she is.”
“I don’t even know how she had the power to even break the window,” the man said. “I thought she was like 78. She was tall, skin and bones.”
“She asks me to call the cops at first, which was weird. But that was the first thing she said to me: Call the cops,” he added.
Beamon later admitted to police that she kept the woman in her house without allowing her to leave. She also made 40 calls to the hospital where her sister-in-law was staying.
Investigators suspect that Beamon was keeping the woman captive to collect her disability payments, Doud said.
Beamon was arrested on April 2 and booked into the Saginaw County Jail on $100,000 bond, the amount ordered after prosecutors described her as a danger to the public.
She will appear for a preliminary examination on April 20.
I’ve been telling anyone who would listen – yes. I can get rather tiresome – that President Donald Trump would not bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages.
Even after he said he would destroy Iran’s civilization and it would never recover, I knew that he would never go through with it. That was the last thing he wanted to do.
So I was confident he would find some kind of last-minute off-ramp.
And, of course, he didn’t want to be seen as backing off his increasingly dire threats.
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I got the White House email at 6:32 Tuesday night. There it was, another delay, after a series of earlier delays. He would give the Iranians two more weeks.
I started posting like crazy, beating television by a couple of minutes, and newspapers by more. But that’s just because my phone happened to be right there. If I’d gone to the fridge for a moment, I would have come back to my laptop and discovered that the world had changed.
I knew in my gut, having covered Trump for 35 years, that he did not want to go down in history as the man who wiped out an ancient civilization. His heart was never in that. It was bluster as a negotiating tactic.
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Still, he had boxed himself into a corner. Former allies in conservative media were denouncing him. “This is a brazen pre-admission of genocide against the Iranian people, which would obviously be a war crime. Madness,” Piers Morgan declared..
Some Republican lawmakers said he had gone too far. Even the U.S. Catholic Bishops said “the threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”
No American president had ever uttered such words.
So I figured the only card that Trump had left to play was delay. And that’s precisely what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which has been the intermediary in the so-called talks, the president agreed to a pause in the hostilities.
That is, according to the statement I received, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives…”
It’s a shaky cease-fire, to be sure, with Iran launching missiles at Israel minutes after it was announced, and Israel saying its ground invasion of Lebanon, after rocket fire from Iranian proxy Hezbollah, isn’t covered.
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By yesterday, in fact, as The AP confirmed, Iran’s state media said it had closed Hormuz again, citing the Israeli attacks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a posting that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or continued war via Israel, and “it cannot have both.”
We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu talked Trump into the war by saying it would be quick and topple the regime. Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, called that “farcical.” Marco Rubio said it was BS. JD Vance was against the war.
And that’s a fascinating sidebar. Trump has been insulting Haberman, who published a biography of him in 2022, for no apparent reason. Yet he granted an hourlong Oval Office interview for their forthcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which the Times piece was excerpted.
As for the president’s current stance, well, he isn’t being held back by murky details. He told Sky News this was a “complete victory,” not just in military terms but “in every other sense as well.”
Trump was on the phone with Fox opinion host Laura Ingraham shortly before she came on the air, and she quoted him as being “cautiously optimistic,” saying: “It sure looks like Iran blinked.”
What, peering through the fog of war, did Trump actually accomplish, other than sending the markets soaring by nearly 3 percent?
On yesterday’s “Fox & Friends,” usually a Trump-friendly show, co-host Lawrence Jones said “we have not reached any of these objectives.”
Dismantling nuclear facilities (“that has not happened”), ending uranium enrichment (“they are still enriching”), transferring uranium stockpiles out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), accepting international inspections (“they are still not willing to do it”), and suspending the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them off”). Jones also criticized Iran for proposals that would never be accepted by the U.S. side.
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Fox anchor Harris Faulkner said yesterday, “this is the least ceasefire-like ceasefire I think that anybody might have anticipated.” Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, said, “the Iranians don’t appear very serious about this ceasefire agreement.”
And therein lies the rub. The two countries remain far apart. This business about a strategic framework just papers that over in a devil’s-in-the-details sense. Iran is never going to agree to give up its nuclear program, regardless of any presidential pronouncements or Mission Accomplished banners.
The Iranian pitch, apparently not the one seen by Trump, says the U.S. must leave the region, give Iran sole control of the strait, and recognize its right to nuclear enrichment.
Don’t take my word for it. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded.”
Look, if this somehow all works out, what most people will remember is that Trump made harsh threats that led to a deal in which the Iranian blockade – “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy b——s” – was lifted. In other words, his Madman routine worked against the world’s leading terror state, which has been killing Americans, Arabs and its own people for 47 years.
But things could always fall apart faster than a speeding drone. It’s the Middle East.
No matter what you think of Trump, his war of choice, his apocalyptic rhetoric or his entire presidency, he’s not crazy. He followed a similar path in his tariff crusade, threatening draconian levies before reaching 11th-hour compromises. As he himself says, he’s a dealmaker. That’s what he does.
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Most media accounts are portraying Trump as caving in or backing down. That’s fair commentary.
But what really happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he was never actually going to do in the first place.
A South Carolina pastor and his wife were arrested after a foster child reported being a victim of sexual abuse, according to officials.
Rodney Gibson and Kawiana Young, both 50, were charged with unlawful conduct with a minor, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department said, according to WIS News 10.
Gibson is also facing charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, unlawful conduct toward a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
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A victim came forward last month to report alleged sexual abuse endured while in foster care at the couple’s home, deputies said, according to the report.
Gibson is accused of sexually assaulting the victim on several occasions, starting at age 15 until they aged out of the foster care system.
Investigators learned that a minor was living with Gibson and Young.
The child told investigators they had been sexually abused by Gibson and physically abused by Young. The minor was then moved to emergency protective custody.
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During an emergency protective custody hearing on March 20, a family court judge ordered the minor to be returned to Gibson and Young’s home.
After investigators conducted subsequent interviews and obtained additional evidence, arrest warrants were obtained. Gibson and Young were arrested on April 1 and the minor was placed back into emergency protective custody.
Gibson and Young were released on bond on April 2.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services said in a statement that Young was a licensed foster parent from June 2021 until June 2025, adding that she fostered six children in her home, but voluntarily relinquished her foster parent license.
The agency said Young failed to mention that Gibson was living at the home, and his name was not on the license. The agency said Young never reported that she was married and said she was not in a relationship.
The agency said it was cooperating in the investigation.
Authorities believe there may be more victims and are asking anyone with information to come forward.
Gibson is a pastor at Pathway 2 Hope Ministries, while Young owns and operates DreamCatcher Child Development Center.
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