Iran has spent the past year fighting a war with Israel and the United States, absorbing sweeping new sanctions, and putting down a civilian uprising that left tens of thousands dead. In the middle of that upheaval, the Islamic Republic has also escalated a campaign against a population that poses it no military threat at all: its own Christian minority.
Multiple sources, ranging from evangelical ministries with contacts inside Iran’s underground church to United Nations human rights investigators, describe the same pattern accelerating through 2026, even as they differ sharply on the numbers.
Texas-based Iran Alive Ministries, which trains house-church leaders and broadcasts Christian programming into Farsi-speaking homes, told Baptist Press in August that at least 33 ministers connected to its network have been killed in recent months and approximately 131 others arrested. Fourteen remain imprisoned, some on death row. Of roughly 176 people in that tally, the ministry could publicly name only 20, four of them among the dead; 156 identities remain withheld. Founder Hormoz Shariat called the figures “just a snap picture of the people connected to Iran Alive.”
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute, situates those numbers within a documented legal and political pattern rather than as an isolated wave. A February report by researchers Janatan Sayeh and Samuel Ben-Ur cited a joint study from Article 18, Open Doors, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and Middle East Concern showing arrests on religion-related charges nearly doubled in 2025 compared to 2024, with more than twice as many Christians sentenced to prison, exile, or forced labor.
The escalation traces to a specific trigger: after Israel and the United States defeated Iran militarily in the 12-Day War of June 2025, Tehran turned on its Christian minority as a scapegoat. Arrests of Christians totaled 40 from the start of 2025 through the war’s end in June; in the single month that followed, authorities arrested at least 53 more. Iran’s own Ministry of Intelligence stated its justification openly, claiming it had detained 53 Evangelicals “trained abroad” for collaborating with the “Zionist regime.”
That accusation is not incidental. Christianity Today reported in April that Iranian house churches are already routinely branded “Zionist” by the regime, a label that leaves converts especially exposed as diaspora opposition figures like Reza Pahlavi gain prominence. The persecution is written into Iranian law: Article 500 of the penal code, which bars worship seen as interfering with Islamic law, was used in nearly 90 percent of 2025 cases against Christians and carries up to ten years in prison after a 2021 amendment.
Muslim converts face a harsher charge still, “moharebeh,” or enmity against God, which carries a potential death sentence. The FDD report names Judge Ashkan Ramesh of the Varamin Revolutionary Court as a central enforcer of the harshest sentences, and calls for the United States to sanction him along with the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, the state body that brands missionary Christianity a “Zionist” project. The crackdown extends beyond Christians: Iran’s Baha’i minority recorded more than 750 “persecutory acts” between June and November 2025, and Iranian Jews were also arrested, with community leaders interrogated.
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