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The rich ironies in the collision of Trump's July 4 celebrations and Khamenei's funeral pale beside the irony that the region's most influential messianic theocrats can be found in Israel

Under equally sweltering skies, and whether by fluke or intent, massive crowds assembled in both Tehran and Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Both were marking the survival of their states, born in revolutions, victories over imperialism and a vision for a different world order. Both events were highly staged performances of patriotism and faith, built on a cult of the leader.

Okay, there's no need to push the analogy too far. Despite the split screen between Iran mourning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the U.S. celebrating its 250th year competing for world headlines, even Trump's America doesn't resemble the lethal theocracy of the ayatollahs.

That doesn't mean there weren't rich ironies. A day after the U.S. president declared that the war wasn't a war but the "denuking of Iran," Donald Trump boasted on July 4 that "We knocked the hell out of" the country – the sum of both comments being a curious mix of Vladimir Putin's "special operation" word laundry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ubiquitous but never actualized promise of "total victory."

Pro-regime Iranians, participating in funerary rites for a leader killed by an Israeli strike on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war, were also celebrating their defiant survival in a war against global and regional superpowers, and their potential post-war empowerment. That confidence was perhaps expressed most clearly by the emcee who called to kill Trump from the podium, and the chants of "Death to America."

The crowds in Tehran didn't overlook the U.S.'s erstwhile partner in war, now relegated to the sidelines by its American "boss", with calls of "Death to Israel" and "God's curse be on Israel." The irony hidden inside that familiar hostility is that some of the region's most influential theocrats fueled by revolutionary zeal can be found in Israel.

The most ideologically fervent, religiously-motivated and ferocious sectors in today's Israel are violent settlers and ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim.

Just this weekend, according to Palestinian reports, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and Israeli human rights activists across the West Bank, leaving over 20 wounded. The assaults included throwing stones, spraying tear gas, beatings, setting fire to buildings and fields, and uprooting olive trees. Physical attacks, sometimes lethal, have become a daily occurrence, a prolonged terror campaign aimed at expelling Palestinians from ever-increasing tracts of lands that will ultimately become Jewish settlements.

Though not on the same scale as the settlers (yet), Haredi leaders are leaning into incitement to violence, increasing radicalization as part of their efforts to legalize their comprehensive draft-dodging through legislation backed by the Netanyahu government. In the last few weeks, they have called for (secular) protestors to be shot in the legs and to "erase" the IDF chief's name, a particularly potent curse. Haredi protestors have blocked roads across the country, declaring, martyrdom-style, their willingness to die rather than be drafted, while others have physically harassed or set fire to secular businesses that refused to close on Shabbat.

Both sectors are effectively claiming their populations should be considered above and beyond the confines of the state and are not beholden to the rule of law. The Haredim have been intensifying their autonomy for years. The violent settlers, even though they are acting in the name of Greater Israel, have long been anarchic, but with unprecedented backing from this government and the security forces under its control, they are moving toward a vision of engulfing – rather than overthrowing – the state.

As Trump and the Iranian regime project bravado and state power, Israel's government is collaborating with settlers and Haredim in the disestablishment of the state and its domain. At the same time, Netanyahu is accelerating legislation to dessicate the independence of the judiciary and the attorney general, defy the Supreme Court, subvert the freedom of the press and even threaten the integrity of the forthcoming elections.

Iran's messianic theocrats achieved state capture in 1979. Hopefully, 2026, the year that Israel assassinated Tehran's supreme leader, won't be the moment that the Israeli state was captured in its entirety by Khamenei's Jewish brothers.