Pete Hegseth Addressed Rebuilding Third Temple in 2018 Jerusalem Speech, Called NATO “Irrelevant”

March 2025: 90,000 Muslim worshippers ascended Temple Mount for Ramadan prayers

“There’s no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible,” U.S. Secretary of Defense (then a Fox News host) Pete Hegseth said during a 2018 speech at the Arutz Sheva conference in Jerusalem. “I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen, but I know that it could happen.”

The construction of a rebuilt “Third Temple” in Jerusalem is deeply rooted in Jewish and even some evangelical Christian eschatology. Derived from visions in the Book of Ezekiel and other texts, it describes a final, permanent house of worship whose construction is essential to ushering in the Messianic era, a time of peace when the Messiah is expected to return to earth.

The Temple has been suggested as one of the main drivers behind the US-Israeli war with Iran and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week argued during his podcast that the Iran War is a “religious war designed to rebuild the Third Temple on the ashes of Al-Aqsa.” “If you’re a Christian preacher calling for the rebuilding of the Third Temple, you kind of missed the whole point,” said Carlson. “That is not Christianity. It’s not even a close facsimile of Christianity. It’s clearly evil.”

The problem with building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, is that it is home to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine. Located in the Old City of Jerusalem, the mosque compound dates back to nearly 700 CE and is the second oldest mosque in Islam. It was built to replace the Second Jewish Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans and replaced Solomon’s Temple, the First Temple, which existed between the 10th and 6th centuries BCE.

Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam for Sunni and Shia Muslims alike. It is a main focal point in the ongoing war in Gaza. Holy sites in Jerusalem have been closed as the war with Iran ramps up, with the Israeli military alleging an Iranian warhead impacted just a few hundred meters from the Old City on February 28, the first day of the war.

“That’s why going and visiting Judea and Samaria and understanding that sovereignty — the very sovereignty of Israeli soil, Israeli cities, locations — is a critical next step to showing the world that this is the land for Jews and the Land of Israel,” said Hegseth during his 2018 speech. “If you walk the ground today, you understand there is no such thing as the outcome of a two-state solution.“

“Without investment of our partners, NATO is irrelevant,” said Hegseth. “The truth [is] that Europe, as Ken pointed out so aptly, is a museum soon to be drowned out by radical Islam and Islamism should they not address their lack of sovereignty, their demographic problems and their inability to defend their culture.”

Hegseth was referring to speaker Kenneth Abromowitz, co-founder and managing partner of NGN Capital, a global healthcare venture capital fund worth half a billion dollars. He was also managing director and a senior adviser of The Carlyle Group.

“I would submit to you, in light of the support you have in Washington, DC, the support you have amongst patriotic Americans, amongst evangelical Christians, amongst believers, amongst Republicans, even amongst some Democrats who can barely say it anymore in Washington…Do what needs to be done here in Israel, because I truly believe America will have your back.”