The predator and the people. Islam presses toward domination

Pierre Rehov [born 1952], a French-Israeli reporter, novelist, and documentary filmmaker trained in law at Paris-Assas, has written extensively on terrorism, media bias, antisemitism, and the Middle East. In Iran’s Regime Is Not Iran: The War the West Refuses to Understand¹, he exposes one of the West’s most brazen deceptions of treating the savage Iranian regime and the Iranian people as one and the same, when in truth the regime is the predator and the people are its target and victim.

Rehov writes that on January 9, 2026, Ali Khamenei [1939-2026], Iran’s second Supreme Leader, unleashed one of the bloodiest crackdowns in modern Iranian history. He cites investigations indicating that between 30,000 and 36,500 protesters were slaughtered in two days, with tens of thousands more wounded, arrested, or disappeared into the regime’s machinery of terror. Khamenei himself was later reportedly killed on February 28, 2026.

This delusion is not new. President Jimmy Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Andrew Jackson Young Jr. [born 1932], said Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini [1902-1989] would go down in history as “a saint.”² That was not merely a bad read. It was an early sign of the West’s chronic habit of romanticizing ideological tyrants, excusing barbarism, and mistaking revolutionary fervor for moral legitimacy.

And as for the fantasy that Iran’s beleaguered people - unarmed, empty-handed, and largely abandoned by the West - can somehow overthrow a regime armed to the teeth and practiced in mass murder, that is just that: fantasy.

President Trump may have thought he was ready for the fight, but one can only hope he did not bite off more than he could chew when he posted on Truth Social on January 13, 2026: “KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! ... HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

If the United States weakens the regime, stirs hope among the oppressed, and then steps back before the tyrants are broken, it will amount to the ultimate betrayal of a people crying out for freedom. To awaken hope and then abandon the captive before liberation is secured would be a historic blow to the cause of freedom.

Michael Youssef [born 1948], the Egyptian-born American pastor, author, broadcaster, and founding pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, cites in his recent book An Unholy Alliance: How Progressivism Brought About an Islamist Invasion a chilling proverb attributed to radical Islamists: “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.”

In Youssef’s telling, Islam presses toward domination [tamkīn], not harmony; submission [islām], not liberty. Historically, that condition has been described as dhimmitude - the reduction of dissenters or non-Muslims to subordinate status under an Islamic order.

Youssef argues that too many American leaders are too timid, too compromised, or too passive to confront the collision with militant Islam now manifesting itself in places such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Plano, Texas. The problem is not going away. It is coming for our children and grandchildren.

Take Plano. A project formerly known as EPIC City and now reported as The Meadow has been described in local reporting as a planned 402-acre, Muslim-centric development northeast of Dallas - reportedly 4 times larger than Disneyland - with more than 1,000 homes, a mosque, a K-12 faith-based school, elderly and assisted-living facilities, apartments, clinics, retail shops, a community college, and sports fields.

GB News recently traveled to Texas to investigate the development and the broader questions it raises. x.com/i/status/2038130354712904056

In his commentary, Peter J. Leithart views 1 & 2 Kings as a narrative of Israel’s descent into systemic idolatry and apostasy - its seduction by the gods of the Gentiles - which leads to judgment and exile. Instead of clinging to Yahweh, Solomon clung to foreign women and their gods.

As Leithart observes, Solomon’s women redirected his wisdom. The king who once built for Yahweh began building shrines for false gods. In clinging to foreign women and foreign gods, he ceased to be Solomon-with-Yahweh.

So it is with men. So it is with nations. Solomon became a different Solomon. America has become a different America.

And Yahweh’s opening judgment in 1 Kings 11 was to raise up adversaries against idolatrous Solomon; foes whom the compromised Solomon of his later years, unlike the faithful Solomon of 1 Kings 2, was powerless to subdue.

The countermeasure. Our best read is that American Christendom, in theological terms, has reached her kairos, i.e. God’s appointed time. The sterile and deeply flawed model of ‘successful ministry’ that has dominated the last 100 years - measured by attendance, holdings, and portfolios - has been tried and found wanting.

Missouri pastor Joe Nicola, in his excellent work Ekklesia: The Government of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth [Spring Mill Publishing, 2014], writes: “Any casual observer of Christianity will immediately recognize the disparity between what Jesus said He would build and the modern church.” Like apostle, the word ekklesia in Matthew 16:18 describes a function. Ekklesia is not the Kingdom of Heaven itself; it is the government of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

To decipher: in America, we have traded apostolic leadership for pastoral maintenance. We have gone from raising up an army of leaders to merely tending flocks of sheep. Pastor Nicola argues that the success of a church or ministry should not be measured primarily by what happens inside its walls, but by what happens in the surrounding community. As he puts it: “Is my city or region looking more like the Kingdom of Heaven or the domain of darkness?”

Ed Silvoso pressed the same point with a piercing question: “Could it be that we have confined to four walls once a week [in] what is designed to be a 24/7 people movement out in the marketplace, transforming our cities and nations?”

A.W. Pink captured it well in The Life of David: “Fellow-servant of God, your sphere may be a humble and inconspicuous one; the flock to which God has called you to minister may be a small one; but faithfulness to your trust is what is required of you.” There may always be an Eliab ready to sneer at “those few sheep in the wilderness.” [1 Sam. 17:28] Let him sneer. Heaven’s measure is not bigness, but faithfulness, as it says in Matthew 25:21: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant… thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.”

Gideons and Rahabs have begun to stand.

David Lane

American Renewal Project

1. www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22452/understanding-iran-regime

2. www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2147746/forty-years-of-misreading-iran/?utm_source=chatgpt.com