The Iranian conflict represents a dual eschatology, religious and material. In its religious guise it shows itself via the preservation of distinct sects – Shi’ism, the Third Temple of Jerusalem and Christian Zionism. All are wrapped in eschatological narratives that intermix with geopolitical goals.
Otzma Yehudit, now a governing force in Israel, explicitly endorses the Third Temple via provocative visits and proclamations of the expansion of Israel. “Thus, the Abrahamic promise, which formerly was the domain of theological and eschatological exegesis, is subtly translated into the realm of operational policy, where spiritual interpretation and the strategic-military element are increasingly intertwined, a visible dynamic in the way Netanyahu frames his political discourse”[1]. This mixes in with secular constructs of a Greater Israel allowing for an ethno-religious justification of Palestinian and Lebanese destruction and colonisation.
Christian Zionism invokes a similar eschatological desire in relation to Israel. As per the proclamations of Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, support for Israel is as much a biblical imperative as a policy position. Interpretations of the Book of Revelation see the expansion of Israel across its biblically-identified territories as a portent of the second coming, with Israel as the centre of the final conflict and beginning of the new kingdom.
Shi’ism similarly invokes an intersectional end time, between geopolitics and eschatology. The theocratic regime of Iran is a preparatory phase for the return of the Mahdi that can also liberate the al-Aqsa mosque via Muslim proxy forces in the wider Ummah. The return brings forth a spiritual awakening and a worldwide conflict demarcating the purified truth from false messiahs. Fitna requires the intensification of conflict to create purification.
These cannot be separated from an emerging material eschatology that portends a secular end times. Geopolitically, all three are cohering spheres of influence to bring forth new nations in a world beyond modernity. The 20th century, through worldwide conflict and mass industrialisation brought forth the apotheosis of modernity as an interconnected globe of production lines, logistical networks and demographic movement. An overturning of established hierarchies and an acceleration of the pace of life – communication, technological intervention, identity, etc.
As Norman Cohn[2] noted with the growth of Millenarian movements in the European Middle Ages, they grew from severe dislocations of communal lifeways. Various plagues combined with the development of urban industry created both a definitive end time through the destruction of villages and farming steads alongside the vast aggregation of new urban centres which presented new problems of piecemeal work and a wandering proletariat. Within this new milieu could emerge narratives which suggested the ending of one time and the beginning of another. As commons were enclosed and property increasingly concentrated into the hands of bishoprics and fiefdoms, a new Millennium of the return of common ownership and a brotherhood of man to replace artificial hierarchies could become effusive.
Millenarianism combined material dislocation with evocations of spiritual renewal and upheaval. The end of the 20th century invoked its own dislocated dynamic, the end of history and the inauguration of a permanent modernity. Ideological questions were now secondary to a choice architecture of consumption patterns and liquid options (both in a financial and cultural sense). Settlement and location became displaced by the growing distribution of goods and information which meant a sense of place was anachronistic. Community is now constructed in forums and intermediary mechanisms, of the workplace, HOA or chat group. The family unit is now part of this inclusive set of choices, flitting between single parent household or polycule not as a contextual response to material factors but as a set of potentials to be activated
The end of history and the dominance of globalisation. However, this short 20th century was a limited golden age. Its input requirements and vast use of resources meant innate limitations and an inevitable mortality. The oil crisis of 1973 and the liquefaction of the Dollar foreshadowed such mortality, revealing its tendentiousness and increasingly overt reliance on military might and ideological conditioning. The literalness of the new millennium was a continuation of the same whose ideology was overcoded by a plethora of new artificialities. New narratives beyond sapient history meant new histories – climatological and spatial being primary.
Beyond history and beyond modernity as the mass reliance on fossil fuels and the desire for modernity’s fruits in the developing world meant the re-emergence of space as the constraint of economic horizons. “The Liquid—or Viscous—Wars of 21 st Century geopolitics will be predominantly related to oil and gas. The Liquid Wars will be characterized by viscosity—the resistance of a liquid to motion—because while capital is infinitely fungible, the location of petroleum reserves is not. The name of the game is Pipelineistan. From 2003 to 2030 the world’s energy security comes with a staggering price tag, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The bill runs to at least US$ 16 trillion”[3].
The construction of pipelines and their maintenance as gateways of power makes Pipelineistan “a supreme law unto itself, untouchable by national sovereignty, serious environmental concerns (expressed both in the Caucasus and in Western Europe), labor legislation and protests against the World Bank”[4]. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were part of the re-emergence of the control of space as a geopolitical variable. If the American empire were to maintain its vast domestic consumption and dollar hegemony it would have to eliminate perceivable threats, no matter how trivial. But these early wars at the end of history were reactionary, dictated entirely by the pre-eminence of American hegemony in the early 21st century.
But they revealed an underlying understanding of access routes for resources. The original axis of evil as conceived by the Project for a New American Century was as much material as ideological. These states had key control of oilfields, gas pipelines and nuclear technology that gave them varying degrees of autonomy vis-à-vis the globalised American century.
This has evolved as American hegemony has weakened into the 2020s, with an increasingly isolationist position being staked across the American political spectrum as many question the benefits ordinary Americans receive from this imperial expanse. The Trump administration has taken the mask off altogether, foregoing the smokescreens of human rights and international law in favour naked geo-economic control. The deposing of Maduro and control over the Orinoco Belt, irredentism over Canadian sovereignty and the ownership of Greenland so as to potentially control future Arctic shipping routes (as well as securing Greenlandic mineral deposits), and the Iranian conflict represent an end to the American empire as previously conceived.
Globalisation meant the free flow of goods and information, with those beyond such means either ignored as part of the global periphery or actively ostracised and castigated as rogue regimes (the axis of evil). The Iranian conflict shows this means nothing anymore, as the Straits of Hormuz are both opened and closed on the whim of geopolitical concerns that centre around who can control global economic space.
Thrown into this is the Greater Israel project which attempts to hegemonise Israel both regionally and globally as a key spatial determiner of these logistical flows. A country with minimal natural or agricultural resources but containing a highly developed tech sector and well-trained military means one that must constantly expand to survive. Combining with its key position as a corridor for resources between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Mediterranean, Greater Israel is a guarantee of survival into the later 21st century.
As the dawn of modernity begins, the Iranian conflict is a microcosm of geopolitical eschatologies that are both material and religious. The two are inseparable, representing the secularisation of the return of the new kingdom not as the coming of the Lord but as the realisation of a new material schism. Millenarian geopolitics expands well beyond this microcosm, and can be seen as governing the logics of China’s BRI and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine[5]. Both need these projects to carve out their spheres and survive as nations in a post-global world.
Growing regionalisation is dictated by controlling the flow of resources, meaning globalisation can no longer continue except at the behest of regional powers and their gatekeeping. Think of the various city-states and trade leagues of medieval Europe, lacking institutionalised universality of weights and measures with merchants encountering a variety of tolls and excises. This is the end of modernity now as we witness “counter‐encirclement foreign policy”[6] writ large. From Pipelineistan to cobalt and lithium mines, from globalisation to the geopoliticisation of logistical intersections.
The Strait of Hormuz is a metaphor for the new world emerging. The borrowed time of mass consumption and energy access is coming to a close, with powers grabbing what they can get. The institutional mirage of international law, whose usefulness always ended at the point spatial control was required, is now completely gone. The end of modernity begets a new history of viscous conflicts and regionalised centres. Losers of these wars will find themselves as another dislocated, wandering proletariat on the edges of existence, begging for scraps from the ruler’s table. The golden age is over, welcome to the next stage.
[1] https://www.descifrandolaguerra.es/israel-iran-geopolitica-fin-tiempos/
[2] Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages
[3] Pepe Escobar, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
[4] Pepe Escobar, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
[5] https://iaindavis.com/multipolar-world-order-part-4/
[6] Pepe Escobar, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
Collapse Patchworks 