Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution a number of Christian leaders, family members and other Christians were killed by the government, either judicially or in extra judicial killings. This was despite Ayatollah Khomeini having written to Iranian Christian leaders a few weeks before the revolution asking for their support in the revolution, which had promised to bring freedom, equality and justice for all, especially religious minorities. However, the first murder of a church leader took place only 19 days after Ayatollah Khomeini had arrived back in Iran, with other assassination attempts and confiscation of church property in the following months.

Even after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 dissidents continued to be murdered. In 1998-9 five prominent liberals who had been murdered were described by the Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as “apostates”. It was subsequently established that they had been murdered by members of the security forces, who believed their actions were protecting the revolution.[1]

In 2025 the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran reported that “Religious and ethnic minorities face systemic discrimination, including arbitrary detention, unfair trials and the disproportionate application of the death penalty, often carried out in secret”, also adding that “Members of the Baha’i faith, Christian converts, Sunni Muslims and ethnic groups such as Azerbaijanis, Ahwazi Arabs, Balochis and Kurds, experience restrictions on their cultural practices, language rights and religious freedom, along with limited access to education, employment and economic opportunities”.[2]

Members of historic Christian communities (Armenian, Assyrian and Chaldean) are allowed to worship, but only in their own languages behind closed doors. They are prohibited from worshiping in Farsi (Persian) or allowing Persian speakers to be present; They have had to supply lists of attendees and are kept under surveillance. At the time of the Iranian Revolution a number of churches were destroyed and no new churches have been allowed to be built subsequently.

There are also a large number of unregistered Evangelical house churches which worship in Persian (Farsi) and welcome Christian converts from Islam. These churches have grown significantly since the 1979 revolution and now almost certainly outnumber the number of Christians in historic churches.  They are subject to intense surveillance, repeatedly and sometimes violently raided by security services and leaders summoned to lengthy interrogations, arrests and imprisonment.

In October 2010 Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Khamenei described house churches as posing a “critical threat” to Iran. A wave of arrests followed Khamenei’s speech and key public figures publicly denounced Evangelicals, with the governor of Tehran describing them as “parasites”.[3] The government has publicly declared its intention of eliminating Evangelical Christians from Iran and has pursued a number of strategies to do so including: arbitrarily arresting Christians and sentencing them to multiple years of imprisonment on vaguely worded charges such as acting against national security or membership of Evangelical groups. Christians prisoners have been kept for extended periods in solitary confinement, subjected to mock executions, tortured and denied essential medical treatment; Female Christians have been subjected to strip searches and sexual assault. On release Christians may be exiled to remote parts of Iran. There also appears to be a specific strategy of seeking to make it economically impossible for Christians to survive in Iran by requiring those arrested to hand over the deeds of their houses or businesses or demanding extortionate amounts of money as a condition of bail which are forfeited when Christians are forced to flee overseas.

Christian converts from Islam are also at risk of being killed by members of their families who regard their conversion as bringing shame on the family. By their nature it is impossible to know how many such honour killings occur.

Iran is not simply a police state where the government closely monitors its citizens and residents for non-Islamic acts, there is also significant additional surveillance from Islamic activists. The Iranian constitution specifically states that every citizen has a duty to “enjoin good and forbid evil” i.e. to ensure others follow the behaviour required by the official interpretation of Islam. There are reported to be more than 40,000 volunteers working for the cyber police to monitor social media.[4]  There are also credible reports of Iranian agents monitoring Christians who have fled Iran and are living in European refugee camps.

The Iranian Penal Code claims jurisdiction over Iranians outside of Iran, which means Christian asylum seekers risk being sentenced for sharing their faith in the west, if they are sent back to Iran. Though Iranian authorities claim that some Christian converts seeking asylum in Europe or the US create “false conversions” to strengthen their cases, it is unclear how western authorities assess the risk for Iranian asylum seekers to be sent back to their home country.[5]

It is believed that arrests have increased drastically in 2023 and 2024, and even more after the Israel-Iran attacks which took place in June 2025. In a November 2025 BBC article, Steve Dew-Jones from Article 18 explains that "Since the recent Iran–Israel clashes, we've seen the authorities use the term 'Zionist Christianity' even more aggressively. By branding converts as agents of Israel, the state frames ordinary religious practice as a national-security threat"[6].

The government shut down the Iranian Bible Society in 1990 and state authorities continue to confiscate Bibles and Christian literature in Persian.

It is impossible for Christian converts from Islam to change the religion on their identity cards and their children are automatically registered as Muslims. If their children reveal that they are Christians they are refused access to higher education.

Iranian Christians who have fled to Europe also face significant persecution from other refugees because they are apostates from Islam. A 2016 survey of Christian refugees in Greece of which 94% were Iranian, found that more than half had received death threats specifically because of their Christian faith. It quoted a western doctor providing medical assistance to them as describing the situation for Christians in the camps as being “like mini-Iran...with the same persecution”. The report also described common themes among refugees noted:

“Many of the refugees interviewed were Iranian apostates. Some had converted recently, others had lived covert Christian lives for years. Their stories shared common themes – that their faith had been exposed and the Iranian authorities and their communities  or families had rejected them, making life impossible to stay.”[7]

The Iranian regime has responded to both 2024-26 military conflicts with Israel and the USA and to the street protests which began in late 2025 by significantly increasing arrests of Christians. Christians have also been killed in the street protests.

Legal situation

The constitution states that the Ja’fari school of Islam is the immutable law and religion of Iran and requires all legislation to be approved by the Guardian Council for its compatibility with Islam. It states that Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian Iranians are free within the limits of that law “to perform their religious rites and ceremonies.”. This in effect, permits members of historic Christian communities to worship behind closed doors as shari’a permits this for dhimmis (see section Dhimmitude below).

The Constitution also states that where there is no explicit statement in Iranian law the judge is required “to deliver his judgement on the basis of authoritative Islamic sources and authentic fatawa” (i.e. the rulings of leading Shi’a clerics).

This affects the punishments given to Christian converts from Islam who are deemed apostates. The Ja’fari jurisprudence states that any Muslim woman who abandons Islam is to be imprisoned with minimal food and beaten with rods at the time of prayer until she repents or dies. However, it contains a variety of different fatwas as to what should happen to a male apostate, with some, including Ayatollah Khomeini having ruled the man should be immediately executed and others disagreeing. This has meant that in practice the sentences passed by Iranian courts on those accused of apostasy have ranged from execution to minor punishments depending on the stance of the judge hearing the case. In recent years Christian converts from Islam have commonly been sentenced to several years imprisonment.

Blasphemy against Muhammad is a hudud offence which carries the death penalty and the Penal Code also imposes a sentence of between one of five years imprisonment on anyone deemed to have insulted “the sacred values of Islam”.

The Ja’fari jurisprudence has from its earliest centuries contained multiple fatwah (Islamic legal rulings) that any Muslim can kill anyone guilty of Islamic blasphemy without incurring any punishment. This provides a degree of legitimation for extra judicial killings either by the state or individuals.

The Iranian Penal Code contains a number of other offences which are used to imprison Christians, including the hudud offences of “waging war against God” (moharebah) (s. 279-285) for which the penalty is either execution by hanging or crucifixion, amputation of the right hand and left foot or banishment; spreading “corruption on earth” (Efsad-e-fel-arz) (s.286) which the Penal Code defines as offences against the people or internal security including “spreading lies”, for which the maximum penalty is execution. S.5-9,498 of the Penal Code specifically state that these offences apply even if committed outside of Iran.

The Penal Code also contains other vaguely worded offences for which Christians have been sentenced including:

s. 498 which imposes a sentence of between two and five years’ imprisonment for anyone leading a group of more than two people of any ideology which aims to “perturb the security of the country”- effectively criminalising house church leaders;

s. 499 which imposes up to five years imprisonment for membership of such a group – which criminalises membership of house churches;

s.500 up to two years imprisonment for anyone deemed to have engaged in propaganda against the Islamic republic, which is used to criminalise any form of evangelism.

In 2021 the government added additional clauses to s.499-500 which imposed sentences of between two and five years on anyone providing “financing or any other kind of material support” to any of these groups – effectively criminalising Church offerings; and for anyone deemed to have insulted one of the recognised religions or Islamic schools of thought – which effectively criminalised any criticism of the treatment of Christians under Ja’fari shari’a.

Ideologies linked to persecution

Shi’a Islam The Shi’a/Sunni split was due to the Shi’a belief that Muhammad’s son in law Ali, should have succeeded Muhammad not just as political and military leader of the Muslim community (as Sunni’s believe the Caliphs were) but also as its spiritual leader. So, while Sunnis place the authority for interpreting Islam in the interpretations of Islamic clerics, Shi’a look to an imam who, though not a prophet, is believed to be a divinely inspired, sinless and infallible religious and political leader of the Muslim community.  The 12^th imam, disappeared in 874 AD and is believed to be in hiding, but will return as the Mahdi, a messianic figure at the end of the world to vindicate his followers and usher in the perfect Islamic society. While waiting for his appearance society is to be guided by mujtahids – religious experts who interpret God’s will and Islamic law for society. This is why the Supreme Religious Leader and the Council of Guardians claim the right to exercise total control over the Iranian government.

Dhimmitude This is based on the treatment of non-Muslim minorities in early Islam. This allowed Christians and Jews as conquered peoples to live, subject to keeping significant restrictions. These included a specific prohibition on building or even repairing churches, only allowed them to worship in private behind closed doors and forbade them from having crosses or Christian books where Muslims could see them, as well as requiring Christians to show total subservience to Muslims. Any claimed breach of these conditions allowed the dhimmi to be killed by any Muslim with impunity. This is central understanding both the historical experiences of the Iranian church for most of its history since the Islamic invasions of the seventh century and the treatment of Christians since the 1979 revolution. The historic Armenian and Assyrian Christian churches have been allowed as dhimmis to worship hidden behind closed doors in their own language, provided they demonstrate subservience to the Islamic government. However, the house churches, consisting of Christians converts from Islam and their children are regarded as apostates from Islam, rather than dhimmis and severely persecuted.

Future risks

The growth of Evangelicals is now seen as a significant threat by Islamic state institutions. Although there have been no known executions of Christians in recent years, a report published in March 2025 by the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran noted that judicial executions in Iran disproportionately targeted members of minorities and that in 2024 around 3% of all the executions carried out in Iran people were executed for so-called “national security offences” which can include the offences of moharebeh (waging war against God) or Efsad-e-fel-arz (spreading corruption on earth)[8]. As these are the offences which Christians are commonly charged with, there is an increasing risk that the execution of arrested Christian leaders will recommence.

This risk has been much heightened by the government crackdown on the street protests, which began on 28 December 2025 in the context of a deepening economic crisis and unrest against the government, and which have led to the deaths of several thousand protestors. 

The conflict between USA and Israel with Iran has also significantly increased the risk to Iranian Christians as the in such circumstances the regime lashes out against those it perceives to be its enemies, regardless of the wider contribution they make to Iranian society.

Church History

It is likely that the Christian Gospel reached Persia in the earliest years of the church and the Gospels and Acts contain a number of references to people from Persia (Matthew 2:1,7,16 NB Magi [μάγοι] is a Persian loan word in the Greek NT; Acts 2:9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites on the day of Pentecost). This is consistent with the assertion of the sixth century Chronicle of Arbil that the church was well established in the Parthian empire by the end of the first century AD.[9] While initially Syriac speaking, conversions among the Persians led to the development of a Persian Christian literature.[10]

From 340 AD the church in Persia was subjected to severe persecution by the Sassanian emperor Shapur 11 (d.379) inspired by both Zoroastrianism and the perceived alignment of Christians with the Roman empire. However, a decree in 410 AD by the emperor Yazdgard 1 (399-420) promised freedom for Christians and restoration of destroyed churches. It also appointed the senior bishop as head of the Christian community, thereby creating the millet system. This allowed the church to continue its worship, but its leadership was responsible for regulation of the Christian community and under the political control of the ruler. [11] The millet system, subsequently modified by the Islamic concept of dhimmitude, formed the basis of the subjugation of Christians in Persia for most of the subsequent centuries.

When the Arab Islamic invasion of 642 AD imposed Islamic rule there was a substantial Christian community. Far from Christianity being in decline, in fact, as the late Bishop Dehqani-Tafti observed:

“Christianity in Iran was perhaps at its highest point about the time of the Arab invasion in the seventh century. It was about this time that the Persian Church sent missionaries to Far Eastern countries, as far as China. Inscriptions on a stone discovered in Hsi-An in 1625 speak of a Persian monk by the name of A-Lo-Pen going to Ch’ang in the year 635 to spread Christianity in those parts.”[12]

Two and half centuries later, in 893 AD, Elijah of Damascus records that the area still had a Metropolitan (Archbishop) and 8 diocesan bishops at Bait Lapat (Gundeshapur) in SW Iran and a further Metropolitan and four bishoprics covering other parts of Fars (Persia).

Since the mid twentieth century significant numbers from historic Christian communities have emigrated to the west, particularly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, at the same time there has been a very significant increase in the number of Christians who have converted from Islam. This appears to be directly in response to the Iranian Revolution with sales of Persian New Testaments in 1982 being almost five times the number immediately before the revolution. A number of published academic analyses suggest that the number of Christian converts from Islam may now significantly outnumber those in historic Christian communities.

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