The Muslim Brotherhood is rallying around Iran as the Israel-Iran war escalates. In a letter addressed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 18, the acting head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Salah Abdulhaq, expressed “full support” for Iran and urged Muslims to unite and “confront the Zionist entity.”

“We are one nation, in the religious, spiritual, civilizational and geopolitical senses alike,” wrote Abdulhaq. He added that Muslims’ “primary weapon” against the “Zionist entity” was the “unity of the Islamic Ummah.”

The Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood elected Abdulhaq following the death of his London-based predecessor last year. Abdulhaq was raised in Egypt, but currently lives in Turkey. The Egyptian government labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization after a car bomb ripped through a police building in 2013 and killed 14 people.

Because the Muslim Brotherhood is at odds with the government of Egypt, it has allied with Iran, even though it is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization while the Iranian mullahs are Shiite.

For more than 1,300 years, the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam have fought one another. Still, Abdulhaq wants the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood to put aside its religious differences with Iran so they can fight Israel and America together. Unlike Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who is both a Sunni Muslim and an Egyptian nationalist, Abdulhaq doesn’t care about Egyptian nationalism. He cares about the “unity of the Islamic Ummah.”

Khamenei is also not much of a nationalist. His goal is to reign as the caliph of an Islamic Ummah, so he is willing to cooperate with Sunni Islamists if it helps him rise to power in the region.

Biblical passages such as Daniel 11 tell of an ancient clash between the Syria-based Seleucid empire (referred to as the king of the north) and the Egypt-based Ptolemaic empire (referred to as the king of the south). Verse 40 of this same chapter reveals that this is a dual prophecy that will have a second fulfillment in the end time.

The Seleucid empire was absorbed into the Roman Empire in 64 b.c., so the end-time king of the north will be a resurrected Roman Empire. This king will clash with an end-time king of the south in a fight that involves Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia (verses 42-43). Today, we see Islamists rising in all three nations.

In his booklet The King of the South, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes, “It looks very much like the end-time king of the south will rule the radical Islamists! Iran is a natural leader for many of them today.”

Iran’s current war with Israel is weakening it as a nation-state, but it may end up strengthening Iran’s position as the leader of radical Islam. Violent jihadists all over the world are cheering on Iran as it launches missiles at Israel.

With the traditional Sunni regimes of the Persian Gulf increasingly looking to Germany for armaments and the radical Sunni regimes of North Africa increasingly looking to Iran for support, events in the Middle East are on the verge of starting World War iii—and bringing about the end of man’s rule on Earth.