By ICC Fellow Dr. Greg Cochran 

What makes a home? Beyond the quality of neighborhoods and locations near good schools, houses currently for sale must compete for the attention of skilled buyers who are well-suited to scrutinize — buyers making sure to get the most for the copious amount of cash they will disburse to buy a new home. Home buyers look for energy-efficient windows, spacious laundry rooms, updated kitchens, and inviting bathrooms. High ceilings and custom finishes put the final touches on the most desirable homes. 

While these features make homes desirable, attracting the most publicity from realtors and advertisers, the fact remains that the most important features of a home lie in the skeletal realities that make a place safe and secure for human habitation. After all, what good is crown molding if the toilets don’t flush? How excited might a buyer be to see a sintered stone island in the kitchen, only to notice the switches sparking when the lights go on? To be a house, the structure must have solid studs, working electricity, flowing drain lines, and a solid roof. 

The roof provides an apt analogy for the current political climate. The roof of a house remains useful and functional thanks to the support provided by the rafters. The rafters accommodate the stresses and strains of weather events: wind, rain, snow, and thunderstorms. Supporting the decking and shingles, the rafters transfer this stress and strain down to the studs in load-bearing walls. Houses appeal to buyers when they appear attractive on the outside, but they must also provide the security and service expected in any abode. Security and service, then, make a home a home. 

This analogy speaks particularly to the current conflict in the Middle East — essentially to the war in Iran. Taking out a bad actor like the Ayatollah functions like the appealing outward features of a new home function — lots of people will see it and like it. But what about the more important skeletal realities? What structure abides beneath the appealing aesthetic of ousting an evil regime? Here is where policy matters. What policy lies beneath the actions that cause rafters to sit beneath the roof, dispersing the stress and strain? 

This question keeps policymakers scrambling. The longer the conflict with Iran endures, the greater the stresses and strains will be, requiring a solid structure to disperse the pressure. Currently, cultural chatter — like the weather itself — rains down doubt about U.S. policy. At least two different major stressors dominate the climate of the ongoing conversations about Middle East policy. These two major stressors can loosely be categorized as politics and persecution. 

Politically, the first stressor concerns the reversal of Middle East strategy by the Trump administration. To this point, the Trump administration is breaking ranks with the several presidential administrations preceding him in reference to our nation’s disposition toward Iran. Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of foreign policy for the Brookings Institution, once testified that a pattern developed at the federal level and has been maintained since “the November 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy and its staff, when the Carter administration’s crisis team launched [this] two-track strategy incorporating both pressure and incentives to negotiate. From that time forward, each U.S. president has indulged in fine-tuning, but the basic binary logic of U.S. policy toward Iran has remained the same.” 

Breaking with this two-pronged pattern of pressure and negotiation incentives, the Trump administration has sharply shifted the political pendulum toward pressure. 

Sensing the stress this has caused among political pundits, Mona Yacoubian has argued cogently for a pendulum swing back toward the middle, toward the longstanding tactic of negotiating a peace agreement with Iran. 

With a contrary take, Ahmed Charai argues that the Trump pendulum swing toward pressure has not yet swung far enough. He argues that momentum needs to keep policy swinging in the same direction, increasing the pressure to the point of issuing ultimatums to Iran rather than negotiating with them. Charai, affirming the military strikes against Iranian targets, said, “Recent coordinated military operations conducted by the United States and Israel represent more than a tactical development. As Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, President Donald Trump framed the action as a restoration of credible deterrence and a reassertion of red lines long tested.” For Charai, the policy change should remain entrenched, not going back to the failed, two-pronged strategy of the past 40-plus years. 

Either way, like spring thunderstorms or winter snow, the current geopolitical disposition toward Iran strains international relations and thus puts pressure on U.S. policy. Will the Trump administration find adequate cover under its current Middle East policy? What is the Trump administration’s Middle East policy? 

According to the Hoover Institute and others, the administration’s Middle East Policy consists of the undeterred commitment to diminish the power of Iran, allowing Israel and the countries of the Abraham Accords to dictate the future of the region. The Trump Administration’s commitment to diminishing Iran rests like rafters beneath a roof upon at least four structural ideas: 

• A commitment to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear state. 

• A commitment to increase pressure on Iran through military strikes if necessary to diminish threats in the Middle East region. 

• A commitment to empower nations signing the Abraham Accords. 

• A commitment to increase and stabilize economic transactions between nations throughout the Middle East. 

If these four structural ideas hold, then perhaps the Trump administration will be able to take cover under the success of its Middle East policy. But there is strong opposition to the policy change. 

Political pressure produces just one of the stressors bearing down on the administration’s Middle East Policy. Religious concerns impose another kind of stress on policy. Christian concern for persecution presents diverse opinions from around the globe. As a result, one cannot really speak of the “Christian” position on Middle East matters. Consider the following responses by various Christian leaders worldwide: 

• Pope Leo XIV quickly took aim against the U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran and pulled the trigger against war and violence, calling for no further action. In his Angelus Prayer message — just hours after the strikes began — the Pope called for the nations to abandon “pressure” tactics and return to negotiation: “Stability and peace are not built through mutual threats, nor with weapons that sow destruction, pain, and death, but only through reasonable, authentic, and responsible dialogue,” he said. 

• In a similar vein, leaders of Eastern Orthodox churches called for less pressure and more “peace,” most likely meaning no further military actions. H.G. Dr. Geevarghese Mar Yulios Metropolitan — a prominent bishop in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and currently president of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) — led a prayer meeting to plead for peace worldwide, with particular reference to ceasing military actions in Iran. As NCCI described the event, “The Ecumenical Prayer for Peace brought together church leaders and members of the Christian community to pray for peace in the world. This was particularly in the context of the recent developments in the Middle East with regard to the U.S.-Iran conflict.” 

• According to the Eurasia Review, mainline Protestants in the U.S. and abroad have been vocal about U.S. actions in Iran, too: “With Middle Eastern connections, Anglicans stress the local fallout. A former archbishop of Canterbury called the war unjust and illegal, undermining global order. U.S. Episcopal leaders have voiced alarm, praying for Iranians and their dioceses there. A regional primate pleaded for the protection of innocents, rejecting enmity toward neighbors.” 

• Meanwhile, Evangelicals portray a more supportive tone. The climate among evangelicals, especially in America, resembles spring more than a winter of discontent. Dr. Nathan Rostampour, an Iranian American pastor, calls for prayer while voicing his support for the military actions taken by the Trump Administration. As he explains, “When some Iranians celebrate or dance these days, it is not because they love war. It is because they have lived for decades under a darkness that few outside the country can fully comprehend. For many Iranians, these moments carry the fragile hope that the long night of oppression may finally be nearing its end.” 

Again, these Christian groups represent differing opinions. Christians are quite diverse in their thoughts about prioritizing U.S. policies. While many decry this diversity of thought as though it were a great weakness and evidence of disunity — if not a denial of God’s reality altogether — the truth of the matter is that unity of policy opinion is neither mandated in Scripture nor to be expected in world affairs, given the reality that Christians abide in nearly every nation on earth. The unity necessary for faith needs no national identity for Christians who believe their kingdom is not of this world. The true Christian city is the one whose architect and builder is God. Christian unity centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son, who is also the second person of the Trinity. 

Yet another aspect of Christian unity ought to be presented here. Christian unity does not abide in national or even international political policy. Christian unity ought to abide, however, in the priority of persecution. Too many texts in the New Testament anticipate persecution and, thus, call on those united in Christ to prioritize ministry to the suffering saints (Galatians 6:10, Matthew 5:10-12, Hebrews 13:3, 2 Corinthians 8).  

Christians ought to pressure policymakers to continue actions that decrease persecution and discontinue actions that increase it. In the case of Iran, the situation is too new to provide definitive prescriptions for persecution. Nevertheless, Christians ought to consider how policies either further oppress or possibly empower churches.  

The Trump administration prioritizes four commitments, as mentioned above. Christians must prioritize concern for suffering saints. Christians might unite in pressuring for an essential concern for religious freedom in Iran and for policies that re-empower freedom of religion in the Middle East. Policies that bring economic transactions to the Middle East might support the administration’s pressure campaign against Iran. Still, such policies might seem more like an aesthetic — an eye-pleasing mantle over the fireplace, for instance — than an essential support. What good would wealth be in Iran or Iraq or Saudi Arabia if it were used to continue persecuting Christians and other religious minorities?  

Christians should voice their diverse political opinions, but more importantly, Christians ought to pressure presidential administrations to promote religious freedom locally and globally. Christian voices might unite to pressure administrations to adopt policies that diminish persecution and promote the free exercise of faith at home and abroad.  

Policy makers, political activists, media companies, and religious leaders live toward policy a little bit like Americans live toward buying a new home. We all shop. We look for pleasing features. We seek to be “at home” with a policy that aligns wtih with our values. Christians must value the global, suffering church and advocate for policies that empower the family of faith. Will the Trump administration’s policies empower Christians in the Middle East? 

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