Iran International
Iranian courts sentenced Christians to more than 280 years in prison in 2025, according to a joint report by four rights groups, in what advocates describe as a widening use of national security laws to suppress religious dissent.
The findings reveal a sharp escalation in repression as authorities increasingly label those who leave Islam as "security threats" and "Mossad mercenaries" following regional conflicts.
The report, titled "Scapegoats" and released on Thursday, documents 254 arrests in 2025, nearly double the number recorded the previous year. Rights advocates say the surge reflects a strategic shift by the Islamic Republic to use national security frameworks to crush religious dissent.
"The Islamic Republic is a religious apartheid state where non-recognized minorities like Christian converts are not considered citizens but just 'ghosts' in the eyes of the regime," said Fred Petrossian, an Iranian-Armenian researcher and journalist specializing in religious minorities, based in Brussels, who collaborates with Article 18.
The study was a collaborative effort by Article 18, Open Doors, Middle East Concern (MEC), and Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
Regional tensions fuel domestic raids
The report describes the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025 as a "pivotal moment" for domestic targeting. In the single month following the June 24 ceasefire, at least 54 Christians were detained across 19 cities.
Petrossian told Iran International that the state has moved to "choke the freedoms" of converts by framing their faith as an extension of foreign hostility.
"A religious holiday becomes criminalized when it represents both faith and collective identity outside state-approved boundaries," Petrossian said.
He pointed specifically to Christmas, which in recent years has gained wide popularity among ordinary Iranians despite official disapproval from clerics.
Shops in major cities openly sell Christmas trees and decorations, cafés display festive themes, and large crowds, many of them Muslims, gather outside churches such as those in Tehran and Isfahan.
Authorities, however, often respond to private Christmas gatherings of converts with raids, arrests, and intimidation.
Petrossian added that the struggle for Christian freedom in Iran is inseparable from the broader fight for human rights and civil liberties for all citizens.
He said that at least 19 Christians have lost their lives in the recent violence and unrest, reflecting how deeply intertwined religious persecution is with the wider crackdown affecting the Iranian society.
Authorities have increasingly weaponized Article 500 bis of the penal code, which criminalizes "propaganda contrary to the holy religion of Islam". The report found that nearly 90% of all charges against Christians in 2025 were brought under this amended article, which carries sentences of up to 10 years.
Systematic mistreatment in detention
The report paints a horrifying picture of the conditions faced by converts in the Iranian prison system, including psychological torture and the deliberate denial of healthcare.
The 'two-tier' propaganda machine
Petrossian pointed to a "two-tier" system where the state uses recognized ethnic Christians, such as those of Armenian or Assyrian descent, to project an image of tolerance while criminalizing the larger community of converts.
While ethnic Christians may worship in their own languages, they are strictly prohibited from preaching in Persian or welcoming converts.
"Recognition does not mean they have all rights," Petrossian said. "The moment members of these communities do not follow the state’s red line, they face repression similar to that experienced by converts."
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has taken an increasing role in these crackdowns, often acting with more brutality than traditional intelligence agencies.
In February, 20 plainclothes IRGC agents raided a gathering in Gatab – a town in Mazandaran province where they reportedly tore cross necklaces off several people and blocked emergency medical personnel from assisting the injured.
"IRGC agents go to homes without a legal warrant and arrest people. They say obscene and offensive things and insult and humiliate them," one convert testified in the report.
Petrossian added that the state’s efforts to control even personal life create a "dystopian system" where religious holidays like Christmas are criminalized because they represent a "collective identity outside state-approved boundaries".
The report concludes by calling on the international community to hold Iran accountable under Article 18 of the ICCPR, which guarantees the freedom to adopt and practice a faith of one's choosing.
Brent crude rose to around $70.50 a barrel after surging more than 4% in the previous session, while US crude climbed above $65, as traders priced in the possibility of supply disruptions from the oil-producing region.
“The balance of risks now tilts to a US strike after market close Friday,” said Michael Every, senior global strategist at Rabobank, adding that any military action could last weeks rather than ending quickly.
European shares also edged 0.1% lower on Thursday after a mixed set of corporate results, with energy stocks rising alongside firmer oil prices as US-Iran tensions kept investors cautious.
Increased US military activity in the region has left markets on edge, despite diplomatic efforts in Geneva this week aimed at narrowing differences over Iran’s nuclear program.
Safe-haven demand pushed spot gold up 0.5% to around $5,004 per ounce, after a more than 2% jump the previous day. US gold futures also edged higher.
“If there’s anything fundamental you could point to that would be supporting gold prices, it’s the prospect of conflict in the Middle East and the kind of safe-haven demand that goes along with it,” said Kyle Rodda, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
Gold has also drawn support from expectations that US interest rates could ease later this year, though minutes from the Federal Reserve’s January meeting showed policymakers were in no rush to cut rates and some remained open to further hikes if inflation stays elevated.
Asian equities were mixed, with gains in technology stocks offsetting caution over geopolitics. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.7%. South Korea’s Kospi jumped more than 3% to a record high, buoyed by renewed optimism over artificial intelligence-related shares.
Still, analysts said geopolitical risk was capping broader risk appetite.
“The two nations have long been at loggerheads over Iranian nuclear activity,” one market participant in Asia told Reuters, adding that any disruption to shipping routes or energy infrastructure could ripple through global supply chains.
For now, traders say oil and gold are likely to remain sensitive to headlines from Washington and Tehran, with volatility expected to persist as the prospect of military action looms.
The imagery shows a new facility at the Parchin military complex covered with a concrete shield and soil, while tunnel entrances at the Isfahan nuclear site have been backfilled.
Tunnel access at Natanz and missile bases damaged during last June’s 12‑day conflict with Israel have also been strengthened.
The reconstruction appears designed to address weaknesses exposed during the brief war, when Israeli strikes targeted Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure and Tehran responded with missiles and drones.
The United States held five rounds of negotiations with Iran over its disputed nuclear program last year, for which Trump set a 60-day deadline.
When no agreement was reached by the 61st day on June 13, Israel launched a surprise military offensive, followed by US strikes on June 22 targeting key nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow.
The fortification work comes as indirect nuclear talks in Geneva remain unresolved. Iran is preparing a written proposal to address US concerns, while Washington has reinforced its regional military posture, including carrier strike groups and additional naval assets, amid concerns that diplomacy could stall.
The Reuters report said the combination of hardened facilities, ongoing military readiness, and persistent diplomatic negotiations reflects Tehran’s dual strategy of safeguarding strategic infrastructure while keeping open the possibility of a negotiated settlement.
The United States has long insisted that Iran must completely halt its uranium enrichment program, stop supporting its armed allies in the Middle East and accept restrictions on its ballistic missile program.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Monday the United States will never succeed in toppling the Islamic Republic and warned that even the world’s strongest military can suffer crippling blows.
In Iranian culture, the fortieth day after a death is a solemn threshold. Families and friends traditionally gather at the grave, laying flowers, reciting prayers and receiving visitors – a ritual of grief that is both private and communal, and that often carries religious undertones.
This week, cemeteries were only part of the picture as mourners map memory onto the sites of violence. With so many deaths concentrated in urban centers and around hospitals, intersections and residential streets, memorials have spread outward from cemeteries into the everyday fabric of cities.
Videos sent to Iran International and others circulating on social media show flowers placed not only on graves but on asphalt, sidewalks and hospital entrances – at the very spots where protesters were shot.
In Shiraz, relatives and close friends of Hamidreza Hosseinipour covered the boulevard where he was killed in petals. In Tehran’s Sadeghieh Square, citizens gathered at the traffic circle where demonstrators had been shot, laying flowers in what is normally a site of rush-hour congestion.
In Tehranpars district of the capital, mourners placed flowers and candles outside a hospital where wounded protesters were taken and where some died.
In Mazandaran province, black balloons were released into the sky.
Schools, too, became sites of commemoration. Videos show groups of schoolgirls lighting candles and singing patriotic songs, marking the chehelom inside classrooms rather than in mosques.
The sites of commemoration have widened beyond the places where many Iranians once expected mourning to unfold. Where people believe their loved ones fell, they now leave photographs, flowers or pieces of clothing.
Pavements become shrines. Traffic circles are transformed into temporary altars. Hospital gates turn into gathering points. The geography of grief has changed.
There are simply too many dead, and too many sites tied to their final moments, for remembrance to remain confined to cemetery gates.
Even when ceremonies do take place at graves, the atmosphere captured in recent videos differs sharply from older conventions of public mourning, where religious elegies used to set the tone. Today, music and movement have emerged as ways of carrying grief.
At Behesht Zahra cemetery in Tehran, footage shows families gathering and playing traditional musical instruments. In Najafabad, Isfahan province, mourners applauded and played music.
In Zanjan, kites were sent into the sky above the cemetery as names were read out.
In Shahreza, a video shows a traditional Qashqai dance performed during the fortieth-day memorial for 20-year-old Pouria Jahangiri, killed on January 8.
In Qarchak, near Tehran, mourners clapped in time to songs played for Hamid Nik, a resident who died after being hit during the crackdown. In another video from Najafabad, fireworks illuminate the night as people gather and chant.
In Mashhad, the memorial for Hamid Mahdavi – a firefighter whose act of carrying an injured protester on his back had spread widely online – took place not in silence but amid chants in the street: “For every one person killed, a thousand will rise behind them.”
These moments do not erase grief, they translate it.
The scenes appearing in recent weeks suggest a shift: not away from mourning itself, but away from a single, familiar language of mourning. Music, clapping, balloons released into the sky, kites and dance have become part of the ritual vocabulary.
After decades in which public mourning was steeped in official religious symbolism, the scenes in recent weeks suggest some are shaping something different: a mourning that is national in tone, public in form, and edged with defiance.
The fortieth day has long been a marker of closure in Iranian tradition – a moment when visitors thin out and life, at least outwardly, resumes.
But with flowers now laid on asphalt and candles lit at hospital doors, the boundary between mourning and daily life has blurred. The city itself has become the setting of remembrance – and, for many, the proof of how profoundly the culture of grief is changing.
