NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
MANASSAS, Va. – 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."
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.
In June 2025, a northern Virginia mosque co-organizes a White House protest with far-left groups backing the Iranian regime; a demonstrator flashes an apocalyptic "Mahdi" flag. (Asra Q. Nomani/Fox News Digital)
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."
U.S. clerics and media platforms promote Islamic "end times" theology that predicts the arrival of the Mahdi, or Messiah, to end "corruption" in the world. (TMJ News Network/Instagram @TMJNewsNetwork and 313 Wisdom of Imams/@313.wisdom)
DEADLY AUSTIN SHOOTING THAT KILLED 3 MAY BE 'ACT OF TERRORISM,' FBI SAYS
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.
On March 1, 2026, in Sana'a, Yemen, pro-Iran protesters brandish billboards depicting the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, flags of Yemen and Iran, weapons, and chant slogans at a rally held to condemn the U.S.-Israel aerial attacks on Iran and the killing of Khamenei and several military officials. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
ENEMY WITHIN: COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERTS FEAR SLEEPER CELLS COULD BE POISED INSIDE US
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."
With the dramatic backdrop of an American flag, skulls for stars and the message "DOWN WITH THE U.S.A." over the flag's stripes, Iranians attended a state-organized rally in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, celebrating the birthday of Imam Mahdi, or the "Hidden Imam," a 9th-century saint whom Shiite Muslims believe will return at the end of time as a messiah to end tyranny and promote justice. In the U.S., Shiite clerics and mosques held similar celebrations, also vilifying the U.S. and supporting the regime running the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
IRAN OPERATING SECRET ‘BLACK BOX’ SITES HOLDING THOUSANDS IN DETENTION: REPORTS
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.
Women's rights activist Sara Ghorbani uses her Instagram account to share the stories of children allegedly killed by Iranian security forces amid recent protests against the country's leaders. She challenges the narrative that the regime is fighting "injustice" by the U.S. "empire." (Sarah Ghorbani/Instagram @sara.ghorbani13)
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.
