We seem to learn nothing from history.

In the summer of 1099 AD, Christian knights stormed Jerusalem, slaughtering Muslims and Jews by the tens of thousands until, as one chronicler boasted, “The blood flowed up to the horses’ knees”. The Crusades — holy wars preached by popes and fought under the banner of the cross — were sold as divine missions to reclaim sacred land from infidels. Nearly 1,000 years later, on Feb 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and plunged the region into open war. Three weeks into the war, the parallels are impossible to ignore. This is not mere geopolitics. The war is not just about nuclear weapon proliferation, or terrorist threats, or oil. It is a throwback to the brutality and religious bigotry that defined the medieval Crusades: A coalition of Western and Judeo-Christian powers waging what is framed as a righteous campaign to topple a Muslim theocracy.

The medieval Crusades were never just about territory. Pope Urban II promised spiritual salvation to any knight who took up the cross. The enemy was dehumanized as “enemies of Christ”, “infidels”, and “pagans” whose very existence offended God. The goal was regime change on a civilizational scale — expelling Muslim rule from the Holy Land and reasserting Christian supremacy. Fast-forward to 2026: The stated American and Israeli objective is the “unconditional surrender” of the Islamic Republic and the destruction of its ability to project power. The US administration has made clear there will be “no deal” short of total capitulation. Iran, the last major Shia theocracy standing, is cast as the ultimate embodiment of “radical Islam” — an “existential threat” not merely to security but to the Western civilized order.

The religious undertones are unmistakable. In the holy month of Ramadan, strikes have hit Qom, one of Shia Islam’s holiest cities, alongside nuclear sites, missile facilities, and oil infrastructure. Iran’s retaliatory wave of missiles and drones has targeted Israel and Gulf states, with Iranian leaders invoking the defense of the Islamic Republic and the broader ummah (the collective worldwide community of Muslim believers). Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, installed after his father’s assassination, received pledges of allegiance framed in explicitly religious terms. Meanwhile, in the US, we are treated to the spectacle of Christian pastors laying hands on the president to imbue his war effort with spiritual righteousness.

As for Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war, the photos showing him bearing two tattoos associated with crusader imagery speak volumes. One photo reveals a tattoo on his chest depicting the Jerusalem cross — a cluster of five crosses long connected to medieval crusader iconography. Another photo displays a tattoo on his right bicep with the Latin phrase Deus Vult (God wills it), a slogan historically associated with the Crusades. It is even more telling that, in his 2020 book, American Crusade, Hegseth wrote that those who benefit from “Western civilization” should “thank a crusader”. He goes on to say, “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.” The Iran war is not mere secular statecraft; it is “holy war” by another name, with hashtags replacing medieval battle cries.

The brutality matches the medieval precedent, but updated for the drone age. Crusader armies left death and destruction in their wake; today’s campaign has already killed more than 1,300 people in Iran alone, the majority of them civilians according to Iranian health officials. Schools, desalination plants and residential areas have been caught in the crossfire. Over 3 million Iranians have been displaced from their homes. Israel’s strikes on Lebanon (now tallying nearly 500 dead) and Iran’s missile barrages on Gulf airports, ports and embassies have turned civilian infrastructure into collateral damage. Oil refineries burn, toxic smoke blankets Tehran, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and global oil prices have surged past $100 a barrel — echoing how Crusader sieges starved cities into submission.

The 2026 Iran war is not a new conflict. It is the Crusades, rebooted with the same rhetoric but more lethal weaponry

The US has already lost a small number of military personnel; many more risk death in a conflict that shows no immediate sign of ending. Precision munitions may be cleaner than swords, but the body count and the deliberate targeting of a nation’s lifeblood (energy, water, and leadership) reveal the same medieval logic — break the enemy’s will by breaking its people.

As in the Crusades, mercy is in short supply. The bellicose, almost gleeful Hegseth promises “Death and destruction from the sky all day long … We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be”. During a recent Pentagon briefing, referring to Iran’s leaders, Hegseth bragged: “They are toast and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it. America is winning — decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.” So much for gravitas and American statesmanship.

What makes this a true throwback is the bigotry that underpins the rhetoric. Just as Crusaders painted all Muslims as inherently savage occupiers of “sacred soil”, today’s narrative frames the Islamic Republic as an irredeemable font of terrorism whose very Islamic character justifies its destruction. Iranian leaders, for their part, denounce the attackers as crusading imperialists bent on partitioning Muslim lands and seizing oil — language that mirrors medieval Muslim chroniclers who called the invaders “Franks” driven by greed and religious hatred. Both sides reduce the other to caricatures: The West sees only mullahs and missiles; Iran sees only Zionists and infidel invaders. Lost in the shouting is any recognition that Iranians are a people with a rich civilization stretching back millennia, or that Israelis and Americans are fighting not abstract “radical Islam” but a specific regime born of 1979’s revolution. The medieval mindset thrives: One side’s holy warriors are the other’s terrorists; one side’s liberation is the other’s occupation.

History warns us where this leads. The Crusades failed. They left Jerusalem in Muslim hands, bankrupted Europe, poisoned Christian-Muslim relations for centuries, and spawned the very resentments that fueled later jihads. The 2026 Iran war risks the same futility. Even if the regime falls, the vacuum will breed new radicals. Regional powers — already reeling from Iranian missiles hitting Gulf states — will be radicalized further. The spectacle of a Judeo-Christian military alliance systematically dismantling the last major Shia power will play directly into the propaganda of every Islamist recruiter across the world.

This is not defense; it is a crusade. The language of “unconditional surrender”, the targeting of a theocratic state’s religious and cultural heart, the civilian toll, and the civilizational framing all echo the darkest chapters of medieval holy war. Until leaders on all sides reject the temptation to fight under the banner of God — whether cross, Star of David, or crescent — we will remain trapped in the same bloody cycle that began when Urban II first cried “Deus Vult”. The 2026 Iran war is not a new conflict. It is the Crusades, rebooted with the same rhetoric but more lethal weaponry.

The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.