Evangelical Leaders Stand Firm with Israel During US-Israeli Operation Against Iran

Despite efforts to shift evangelical Christian support away from Israel, influential religious leaders confirm their community has remained steadfast in backing the Jewish state throughout Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israel military campaign against Iran that concluded with Wednesday’s ceasefire.

Dr. Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem and a close ally of President Donald Trump, traveled to Israel on February 26 as tensions escalated ahead of the operation. During his visit, Evans toured missile impact sites, met with wounded civilians and Holocaust survivors, and provided $50,000 in financial assistance to a bereaved family.

“I knew the war would start, so I flew to the area. I have been in 41 wars. I go there intentionally when people are hurting to help them,” Evans told Fox News Digital.

On March 1, an Iranian missile struck Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem, killing nine people. Evans arrived with first responders shortly after the attack and later visited Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, where he met Pnina Cohen, who was injured and lost both her husband and mother-in-law in the strike.

Operation Epic Fury—called Roaring Lion in Israel—began on February 28 with the stated objective of “obliterating Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and production capacity,” weakening its military infrastructure, and preventing nuclear weapons acquisition, according to White House briefings. The operation’s first day saw the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel’s Ministry of Health reported that since the beginning of the conflict, 7,183 people have been evacuated to hospitals, with 118 still hospitalized as of Tuesday.

Evans described the US-Israel partnership as unprecedented in its scope and coordination. “No one could have imagined an American president partnering so closely with Israel against radical Islam,” he said, calling the campaign “historic.”

According to Evans, evangelical support for Israel is deeply rooted in religious belief. “The Bible is a Jewish book, and evangelicals believe in a Jewish person, Jesus,” he explained. “They see Israel as the biblical land and believe God keeps his promises.”

The evangelical Christian community, which numbers approximately 52 million people in the United States, supported Trump’s presidency with the expectation that he would back Israel, Evans noted.

Beyond political support, Evans emphasized that evangelicals are actively fighting misinformation online. “We’ve had 127 million views on social media in the last eight weeks,” he said. “We are fighting misinformation and antisemitism because lies can cost lives.”

He stressed that evangelical support extends beyond prayers to practical assistance: “We don’t just offer prayers—we provide financial help to those who lost homes and possessions.”

Evans acknowledged that about 22-23% of younger evangelicals have shifted away from traditional support for Israel, influenced by universities and online voices. “We are working to reach them and I believe we can,” he said.

American Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, told Fox News Digital that the evangelical community supports Trump’s decision to confront “Iran’s menacing and murderous behavior.”

“We will be backing his request to Congress to fund this effort, and we will ensure our elected officials represent the will and morality of the American people by seeing this righteous endeavor to its righteous end,” Hagee stated.

He emphasized that “as Americans, we have a right to defend ourselves against the Islamic Republic’s half-century of terror. As Christians, we are mandated to defend ourselves against evil, to stand with the oppressed against the same, and to stand with the Children of Israel at all times.”

Hagee rejected the idea that true evangelicals were turning against Israel, attributing any shift to “false doctrine” rather than mainstream evangelical teaching. “Evangelical Christians who’ve been raised in the church and are biblically literate are Christian Zionists,” he asserted.

Franklin Graham, President and CEO of the evangelical disaster relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, echoed this support, noting that “Iran has vowed to wipe the State of Israel off the face of the earth, and with nuclear weapons, they could.”

“If President Trump had not stopped them, this is something this fanatical Islamic regime might have done within the next few months,” Graham said.

He urged Americans to remember that “Israel is the only truly democratic nation in the Middle East—the only one. And they have been our nation’s closest ally in the region. I urge Americans to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ as the Bible instructs us.”

Graham praised Trump’s resolute stance: “We’ve never had a president like President Trump in my lifetime. If he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it. He warned Iran that if it continued to develop nuclear weapons, the U.S. would intervene, and that’s exactly what he did.”