In Shakespeare’s tragedies the most diabolical presences are often invisible hands that shape a hero’s perception. The witches in Macbeth and Iago in Othello share an expertise in equivocation — the art of saying things that are literally true while steering minds toward lethal conclusions. The witches never “lie” to Macbeth; they offer double-edged prophecies that sound straightforward and credible, but that are designed to produce the wrong response. Macbeth hears what he wants to hear, convinces himself he is fated to be king, and then becomes the agent who makes that fate real by murder and usurpation.
Equivocation is subtler than simple falsehood. It exploits literal truth to create a false sense of security or inevitability. The witches tell Macbeth that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” and that “Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane.” Both statements are literally true only in the deliberately misleading senses the witches intend: Macduff was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped” and the advancing army uses branches from Birnam Wood as camouflage. Macbeth’s faith in the prophecy makes him complacent and monstrous; in the end, prophecy is fulfilled by the very acts it inspired.
Why return to Shakespeare in an age of science and secular politics? Two reasons. First, Shakespeare illuminates human psychology in extremis — how belief, ambition, and rhetorical manipulation animate violence. Second, there are worrying signs that modern foreign policy, especially around the recent US–Israeli campaign against Iran, has been animated for some participants by a belief in biblical predestination and apocalyptic destiny.
Reporting in The Guardian and other outlets has described complaints that US military commanders have used apocalyptic Christian rhetoric with troops involved in actions connected to Iran, framing operations as part of “God’s divine plan” and citing imagery from Revelation and Armageddon. More specifically, public interviews and reporting indicate that some influential figures in Trump’s circle, and among his allies, view Israel’s expansionist ambitions — an expanded Eretz Israel — as justified by biblical texts. Independent reporting has also circulated claims that President Trump has been couched in apocalyptic framings by supporters who see him as anointed to trigger end-times events.
Whether President Trump himself fully believes such theology is secondary to the point that it matters if senior officials, commanders, and public voices do. If key actors interpret political and military choices through a lens of destiny, the consequences are not merely rhetorical. Belief that history or scripture calls one to act can rationalize preemptive violence, extraordinary cruelty, and political decisions that ignore ordinary checks and balances.
Macbeth’s tragedy is instructive because it shows how prophecy can convert a capable leader into a butcher. Macbeth begins as a loyal, valorous soldier, but once “rapt” by the witches’ words he moves from servant of the state to a paranoid tyrant. The witches’ equivocation does not provide Macbeth with information he lacked; it provides an interpretive frame that makes murder seem not only possible but required to realize destiny. In modern terms, when leaders and their advisors adopt a narrative of predestination, they are likelier to interpret inconvenient realities as obstacles to be eliminated rather than problems to be negotiated.
There is a particular American dimension to this danger. Despite a broadly secular public life, the United States still harbors potent currents of millenarian thought and conviction politics. Many Americans identify national purpose with missions that appear ordained by divine or historical logic. The US–Israel relationship, historically grounded in strategic calculation, has become entangled with American Christian nationalist and fundamentalist theologies that see contemporary geopolitics as fulfilling biblical prophecy. That alliance fuses two dynamics: aggressive territorial politics on the Israeli side and apocalyptic expectation on the American side. The result can be policy choices justified by selective readings of scripture rather than by pragmatic or legal considerations.
Media and political rhetoric play the witches’ role today. Equivocation thrives when the press and powerful communicators present selective truths, decontextualized passages, or emotionally charged framings that encourage audiences to infer inevitability. A prophecy quoted on its own can be turned into a strategic imperative. When commanders, ambassadors, and politicians use religious apocalypse as moral cover, the public is invited to accept extraordinary measures as part of a cosmic script rather than as choices with ordinary, avoidable human costs.
Macbeth’s soliloquy — “Life’s but a walking shadow… a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” — speaks to the hollowness at the center of power that has been built on illusion. The witches’ words gave Macbeth a surface narrative of meaning; underneath, his actions led only to ruin. Similarly, contemporary leaders who embrace destiny narratives can lull populations into fatalism while producing widespread death, displacement, and economic collapse. The belief that one acts to fulfill prophecy can become a license for brutality and a way to evade accountability: if history demands it, who is to blame?
There are concrete signs that this dynamic is affecting recent events in West Asia. Whether or not biblical literalism is the motive in every decision, reports of apocalyptic rhetoric used to rally troops, or of religious justifications voiced by senior officials, should alarm those who value deliberative policy-making. The biblical texts — references to Amalek, to the patriarchal promises in Genesis, to Armageddon — are complex, historically situated, and susceptible to multiple interpretations. Using them as straightforward maps for contemporary territorial politics is at best anachronistic and at worst dangerously instrumental.
The media also contributes to the illusion that prophecy is being “fulfilled.” Sensational reporting, selective quoting of religious authorities, and amplifying fringe claims without context create a public impression of inevitability. That helps normalize the idea that certain wars or political projects are preordained. Like Macbeth, a polity can become “rapt” — wrapped and violated by a discourse that suborned its reason.
If there’s a moral from Shakespeare for our moment, it is this: equivocal truths are powerful because they bypass deliberation. They replace prudence with fatalism. They turn leaders into actors playing a script written by someone else — or, more dangerously, into playwrights who believe they are merely fulfilling a script. The remedy is not to banish religion from public life; democratic societies have always wrestled with moral and religious convictions. The remedy is to insist that public policy be grounded in transparent reasoning: evidence, consequences, proportionality, and respect for law and human life. Prophecy should be the subject of private faith and theological debate, not the rubric for launching wars.
We should also ask uncomfortable institutional questions: when members of the military or diplomatic corps appeal to apocalyptic destiny, who monitors such rhetoric? When political leaders allow or encourage messianic framing, who defends secular deliberation and international norms? And for citizens: are we demanding explanations based on strategic logic and verifiable intelligence, or are we passively accepting grand narratives that sanctify violence?
Macbeth was undone by believing words that were literally true but deliberately misleading. Today, we face a different technology of equivocation — modern media, social platforms, and political theater — that can make myth feel like policy. Recognizing the pattern is the first step. Demanding accountable, reasoned policy is the second. Otherwise, like Macbeth, our states may find themselves surprised when the wood marches and the consequences finally arrive.
