Recent developments alone paint a vivid picture. Gulf states have conveyed to Washington that a ceasefire is insufficient, demanding instead the degradation of Iran's military capabilities. Yemen's Houthis have formalized their offensive against Israel within the broader war effort. This is no longer a bilateral conflict. It is a simultaneous eruption of fissures that have long fractured the Middle East.
Yet to view this war solely through the prism of missiles, airstrikes, crude oil and exchange rates is to see only half the picture. Beneath the surface lie deep geological strata of history and religion, ethnicity and collective memory.
Iran, which claims the mantle of Shia leadership, has long competed with the Sunni-dominated regional order. Israel's security doctrine clashes with the broader Islamic world's grievances. Western historical intervention and the lingering memory of empire have together fueled today's volatility.
The Sunni-Shia divide transcends doctrinal differences. It functions as a political axis along which Iran and Saudi Arabia contest leadership of the Muslim world. Religion serves as a banner, but what moves that banner is power, fear, memory, and mobilization.
The medieval Crusades cast a historical shadow that persists to this day. They were military expeditions launched by Western Christendom under the banner of reclaiming the Holy Land and containing Islamic power. It would be reductive to frame today's Middle Eastern conflict as a mere repetition of the Crusades — nation-states have since emerged, oil and nuclear weapons have entered the equation, and international law and global finance now shape the landscape. Yet the ancient template of "politics waged in God's name" remains very much alive.
Faith does not inherently breed violence. But when political power absolutizes faith, religion becomes the most potent language of mobilization. The tragedy of the Middle East has been repeated at precisely that juncture.
To understand this war, one must confront a fundamental truth: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all revere Abraham as a common ancestor of faith. They are Abrahamic religions. In other words, the faiths now training their weapons on one another are, at their core, siblings born from a single root.
That they share the same origin yet exclude and deny one another represents, from the standpoint of universal human values, a painful paradox. The moment belief ceases to be a path for saving human lives and becomes an instrument of division, faith loses its original meaning and degenerates into the language of power.
This paradox manifests with particular intensity in the Middle East, and nowhere more acutely than in Iran. Today's Iran is known as a Shia Islamic state, but its historical roots run far deeper. The ancient land of Persia was the heartland of Zoroastrianism — a faith widely assessed as having influenced the later development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Moreover, Iran is a nation uniquely situated within the Middle East, using Persian rather than Arabic as its official language.
Within this complex entanglement of religion, ethnicity, and language, conflict transcends territorial disputes and resource competition, escalating into a collision of identities. The Iran war is simultaneously a contest of "who is stronger" and a clash over "who we are."
The Sunni-Shia rift is not, at its core, merely a theological matter. The schism that began with the seventh-century succession dispute within the Islamic community has solidified over the centuries into a foundation for state alliances, military networks, and identity politics.
Iran has expanded its influence through Shia networks stretching across Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Sunni-majority states have perceived this as a challenge to their own security and regional hegemony. This is why Gulf nations, even while not fully aligning with Israel, quietly hope for the diminishment of Iran's capabilities — revealing an ambivalence that lays bare a critical truth: though this war wears the garb of religion, its actual operating mechanism is the politics of the balance of power.
Yet religion should not be dismissed lightly. The ambitions and prejudices of political leaders invariably exploit a people's collective memory and wounds. Religion ought to restrain the human impulse, but when fused with power, it readily becomes a tool of absolutism.
Phrases such as "God's will," "the mission of a chosen people," and "the revenge of history" are among the most potent rallying cries for mobilizing the masses. In that moment, the adversary ceases to be a negotiating partner and becomes a target for elimination. War is no longer a border dispute but an existential struggle. This is precisely why the Middle East stands at such a dangerous precipice today.
When one side defines the other not as an agent of flawed policy but as the very embodiment of evil, peace is no longer a strategic question — it becomes an act of betrayal.
Ending the Iran war, therefore, cannot be achieved through military ceasefire alone. A ceasefire silences the guns but does not silence the narrative of enmity. Genuine resolution requires a simultaneous approach across three dimensions.
The first is national security. Tangible safeguards must be established to halt strait blockades, missile strikes, and the deployment of proxy forces. The second is politics. The multilateral negotiating framework — entangling Iran, the Gulf states, Israel, its neighbors, the United States, and Europe — must be restructured. The third is the dimension of civilization and religion. Unless the mentality that views the adversary as a target for annihilation is dismantled, war will return in altered form.
The Middle East's true affliction is that memories outlast weapons. Thus, the philosophical and religious language that addresses memory must re-enter the discourse.
It is here that South Korea's experience offers food for thought. The Republic of Korea is among the rare nations where Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Won Buddhism, Confucian traditions, and folk beliefs have coexisted within a single society. The Korean Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits discrimination on religious grounds. Relevant studies have noted that Korean society exhibits comparatively high support for religious freedom and interfaith coexistence.
This is not to suggest an absence of conflict. But the fact that the state has not absolutized any single religion, and that multiple faiths have accumulated an experience of competing yet coexisting within institutional frameworks, constitutes a tangible asset.
At the deeper root of this Korean asset, the spirit of Hongik Ingan — "to broadly benefit humanity" — and the ideal of Jaesaei-hwa — "to harmoniously govern the world" — are frequently invoked. These ancient principles do not proclaim the supremacy of any single religion. They are closer to ethical maxims for sustaining both the individual and the community.
To revere the heavens without harming nature, to value the community without abandoning human dignity — this is the soil in which religious coexistence can take root. Translated into today's language, it amounts to this: no one may trample another in the name of God, and neither state nor civilization may stand above human dignity. This is not a technique of interfaith compromise. It is the final principle that civilization must uphold.
In this context, the thought of Daseok Ryu Young-mo also merits renewed attention. Rather than insisting on the absolutism of any single religion, Daseok sought conscience, life, and the will of heaven within the diverse traditions of human spirituality.
What the Middle East has lost today is precisely this: the recognition that though beliefs may differ, human suffering is the same; that though the names of God may differ, the lives that must be saved are the same. The force that ends conflict does not lie in making the other entirely the same. It lies in recovering a shared humanity while acknowledging difference.
Finally, it is worth recalling the words of the Bible, the Quran, and the Jewish scriptures together. The Bible says, "Blessed are the peacemakers" — that the practice of peace is the true mark of faith. The Quran says God created diverse peoples "so that you may know one another" — that difference is not a pretext for domination and extermination but a starting point for mutual recognition and respect. The Psalms sing, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity." These brief passages from different scriptures converge upon a single truth: God did not command humanity to sanctify hatred. He asked us to know one another, to live together, and to build peace.
The essence of the Iran war can therefore be distilled into a single proposition. This is a war of guns and missiles, and simultaneously a war of memory and faith, ethnicity and power. That is why it is harder, and why it endures longer.
But precisely because of this, the solution must also be multi-layered. Military deterrence and diplomatic compromise, economic interests and religious reflection, national security and human dignity — all must advance in concert. Elevating any single dimension collapses the rest. The Middle East's history has for too long attempted "the peace of the victor." The time has come to pivot toward "the peace of those who must live together."
The question South Korea must ask itself while witnessing this tragedy is clear. Do we truly possess the wisdom befitting a nation where religions coexist? Are we prepared to present Hongik Ingan not as a textbook phrase but as a universal ethic for the world? Do we possess the spiritual depth to find a single truth within different faiths, as Daseok once sought?
And can we look upon the world anew through the ancient intuition that heaven, earth, and humanity must walk together — Injungcheonji-il, the recognition that the will of heaven and nature dwells within the human being?
The conclusion is at once simple and difficult. To end the era in which Abraham's descendants train their weapons upon one another, humanity must now move beyond "the politics of difference" and recover "the ethics of sameness."
Ethnicities differ, but suffering is the same. Religions differ, but life is the same. Nations differ, yet human dignity cannot be divided. When we believe that the will of heaven and nature lives within the human being — when we awaken to the truth that humanity is not a separate master standing over nature but an existence bridging heaven and earth — only then do restraint, coexistence, and peace become possible.
War is not ultimately won by those who seize the land, but ended by those who sever the inheritance of hatred. Truth, justice, and freedom are not the banner of any single camp. They are the last fence that keeps human beings human.
Our gaze upon the Iran war must begin there. To ensure that politics which discards humanity — under the pretext of religion, ethnicity, or the state — can no longer prevail: that is the task of 21st-century civilization, and the path that the Republic of Korea can quietly yet decisively present to the world.
*The author is a columnist of AJP.
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