On Wednesday, while speaking at a Pentagon prayer service, he called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” asking that “wicked souls” be “delivered to the eternal damnation” in the fight against Iran, a Muslim-majority nation.
Some senior military commanders seem to have followed his lead, with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog organization, saying it has received more than 200 complaints from service members that their superiors had told troops it was all part of God’s plan that they be deployed to Iran.