FIRST ON FOX: For many, the war with Iran — and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — might seem like the climactic end to a long, brutal reign of terror by the theological clerics who have run the country since 1979.
But a Fox News Digital investigation reveals that, for certain hardline Shiite ideologues, including in the U.S., this is not an ending but a prophetic showdown that will usher in the arrival of the "Mahdi," a messiah, according to Islamic eschatology, or the theology of end times.
In this prophecy, Mahdi will emerge to battle Dajjal, the Islamic equivalent of the Antichrist, in a final battle of Armageddon. For many of these ideologues, President Donald Trump is Dajjal.
At a recent Friday sermon at a local Shiite mosque in northern Virginia, an imam closed prayer with an earnest plea, before war broke out in Iran: "May Allah destroy all the nonbelievers – or kafiroon or munafiqoon," he said, using Arabic words that refer to "nonbelievers" and "hypocrites."
He asked for this victory "before the arrival of Imam Mahdi."
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Fox News Digital observed the sermon and also witnessed a special table of honor in the middle of the mosque’s main prayer hall, featuring framed photos of Khamenei embracing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah, also killed by Israel for orchestrating terrorist attacks.
The Friday service at the Manassas Mosque reveals a theological dynamic that Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about in early February, noting that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leaders are guided not merely by geopolitics and national security considerations, but by "pure theology."
"We have to understand that Iran ultimately is governed, and its decisions are governed by Shiite clerics — radical Shiite clerics — who make policy decisions on the basis of pure theology," Rubio said.
In its investigation, Fox News Digital conducted a digital analysis of hours of sermons and scores of pages of pro-regime protest slogans, messaging and social media posts, using large-language models, and found clerics, community leaders and media platforms in the U.S. framing tensions with Iran in explicitly apocalyptic terms rooted in eschatology, or Islamist end-times theology.
The investigation found that precepts shaping Tehran’s worldview, from its clerics to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are also being preached on American soil by proxies for Iran’s propaganda.
From the mosque in northern Virginia to religious institutions in Michigan and Texas, clerics aligned with the Islamic Republic are advancing a doomsday interpretation of faith that casts geopolitical and military confrontation with the U.S. as part of a prophetic destiny tied to the return of the Mahdi.
After war broke out Friday night, Fox News Digital witnessed pro-regime chats on messaging platforms, like Telegram, filled with prayers, awaiting "the arrival" of Mahdi.
"We need Al Mahdi…His return with Jesus will be the final win permanently," one read.
"The saviour the warrior the dominator ‘ imam mahdi ’ [sic] will arrive," read another.
Last summer, the Manassas Mosque co-organized a White House protest with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition, CodePink and other far-left groups to support the Iranian regime. The groups are now again protesting Trump’s military action against Iran.
One demonstrator, wearing a black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarf over her face, carried a flag last summer that read "Labayk ya Mahdi" in Arabic, meaning, "At your service, oh, Mahdi."
In Farsi, Arabic and English, the flag also had the message, "I dedicate every single of my steps to your reappearance."
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Pro-regime mosques, K-12 schools and local community organizations in the U.S. are "producing messaging that mirrors Tehran’s talking points almost word for word," warned Andrew Ghalili, policy director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran, an advocacy group led by Iranian Americans who oppose the theocratic regime running Iran.
In an upcoming report, "The Ayatollahs’ Influence Network in the United States," reviewed by Fox News Digital, the group's researchers conclude the Islamic Republic of Iran spreads "Tehran's messaging" in a network of institutions it supports in the U.S., for example, pitting Trump as the Dajjal fighting defenders of the Mahdi, like Khamenei and now his successors.
"What we're seeing is years of deliberate investment by the Islamic Republic inside the United States," Ghalili told Fox News Digital.
"This is happening on American soil, and it's just another way in which the regime poses a direct threat to the United States, this time not with missiles but through infiltration," he said.
A gunman just killed three in Austin, Texas, wearing a sweater that said, "PROPERTY OF ALLAH." According to media reports, law enforcement officials found the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and photos of its leaders in his home.
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After the recent Friday service, two community leaders at the Manassas mosque declined to speak for attribution but told Fox News Digital that the rhetoric of destroying "nonbelievers" and the photos of Khamenei and the terrorist group leaders are meant to challenge "injustice" before the Mahdi appears.
A Harvard University report on "The Hidden Imam and the End of Time" recognizes the world’s two billion Muslims hold a range of beliefs regarding eschatology and many reject strict or literal interpretations.
In the majority Sunni sect and the minority Shiite sect of Islam, clerics describe the Mahdi’s army traveling from modern-day Iran to Damascus, Syria, where Jesus would appear at the Umayyad Mosque and pray behind the Mahdi. The Mahdi’s forces would battle Dajjal in Syria and kill him in Lod, Israel, conquering the world.
Days ago, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency repeated the end-times narrative, quoting Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem, claiming the regime is the "government of Imam Mahdi" and its anti-U.S. "resistance is the path to hastening his reappearance."
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For women’s rights activist Sara Ghorbani, a writer who fled Iran’s rigid theocratic rule in 2010, the regime's death grip on power is disturbing.
"We’re fighting an evil that the world doesn’t truly comprehend in its belief that it has a divine mandate to usher in a day of apocalypse," Ghorbani told Fox News Digital.
"Our brave people in Iran are fighting a tyranny that believes it is God’s salvation for this earth when, in fact, it is a cruel and ungodly regime that is actually their own prophecy of Dajjal," added Ghorbani, who created a short video of children the Iranian regime allegedly killed in recent weeks.
In Dearborn, Michigan, Usama Abdulghani, imam at the Hadi Institute, recently posted a controversial video on a YouTube channel for "Light of Guidance," which says on its YouTube page that its content isn’t connected to any other organization.
Before war broke out, he warned congregants that "the empire is now right outside the door" of Iran, in the form of U.S. forces. The Hadi Institute and the Light of Guidance didn’t respond to requests for comment about the cleric’s statements.
In another lecture, he reassured congregants, "Iran has been waiting for the mother of all battles for 47 years," since 1979. He said Americans shouldn’t fight "for this empire."
He urged congregants to engage in a "clarification jihad" and convert Americans to Islam "before Imam Mahdi returns."
In its report, the National Union for Democracy in Iran alleges that the Hadi Institute is a "rhetorically aggressive node in the pro-Iran ecosystem." It has a publishing enterprise that says on its website that its staff "deliver an unfiltered message in promoting an Islamic worldview in preparation of the Mahdi." The Hadi Institute and its publishing initiative didn’t respond to questions about the criticisms about its work.
It alleges anti-U.S. propaganda, like the doomsday scenario, is often expressed at venues supported by a pro-regime New York-based 501(c)(3) organization, the Alavi Foundation, which it alleges has built "durable, institution-based influence networks operating inside the United States through religious, educational and nonprofit structures."
In its latest IRS Form 990 filing, the Alavi Foundation, headquartered on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, reported $58 million in assets. The Alavi Foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment about the allegations that it promotes propaganda that supports the regime in Iran.
At one point, Abdulghani reassured his congregation that Iran would defeat U.S. forces, saying, "Iran has something for these guys. Don’t be worried about Iran. Iran has been waiting for the mother of all battles for 47 years. They’ve been waiting for this. Iran is prepared. Don’t worry about that. Iran’s going to be able to handle its business."
In a new report, researchers at the National Contagion Research Institute, based in Princeton, N.J., analyzed regime narratives alleging the CIA and Israel's Mossad spy agency, fomented January’s protests against the regime, an allegation that Abdulghani repeated. They found "decentralized influence networks," including in the U.S., "operationalize and amplify" pro-regime narratives.
The pro-regime messaging even invokes the end-times narrative to children. In late December, the "Muslim Student Association Persian-Speaking Group of North America" shared a video showing children coloring paper masks, swords and shields labeled "Ya Mahdi, Labayk," or "Oh Mahdi, come." The children staged mock attacks with their paper weapons amid Legos and glitter.
A few years ago, a video from the Islamic Education Center of Houston went viral in Iran, featuring students saying they would be soldiers for Imam Mahdi, singing, "I make an oath to be your martyr." The center didn't respond to requests for comment, but an academic told the local media the video was metaphorical allegiance to a religious figure.
The messianic messaging also extends to pro-regime media platforms. Earlier this month, a media website, TMJ News Network, published an article headlined, "The Promise of Justice Amid Corruption," featuring an image of convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein alongside a green-cloaked silhouette and images of other figures referenced in documents released by the Justice Department. Only Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell has been implicated in illegal conduct in connection with the Epstein case.
The article stated that "against this backdrop, the Mahdist movement represents a promise of justice."
On the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, the pro-regime Light of Guidance hosted an assistant imam, Hassan Salamey, who invoked "the Epstein list" to denounce "the Satanic" West.
"The Islamic Republic is the system that is working to prepare the grounds for the saviors who will come side by side: Jesus, the son of Mary, and the Mahdi from the final prophet's line," he said. "This is the transitional government that will lead the fight to save us all."
Back at the Manassas Mosque in northern Virginia, congregation members closed their prayers seeking to "destroy all the nonbelievers," the portraits of Khamenei, Sinwar and Nasrullah over their shoulders.
Fox News Digital's Hannah Brennan, Tessa Hoyos and Nikos DeGruccio contributed to this report.