Iran has just seen several weeks of lethal turmoil, the most severe since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that forever changed the country and, for that matter, the world.

That revolution, almost half a century ago, toppled a monarchy that leaned to the West and replaced it with an Islamic republic that wanted to eradicate the West.

Now, masses of Iranians want to eradicate the Islamic Republic. But such a regime is not inclined to yield to popular sentiment.

Beginning on Dec. 28, 2025, Iran erupted in nationwide strikes and protests amid colossal inflation, frequent energy shortages, and an economy on the verge of collapse.

The atmosphere is so volatile right now that Iran’s attorney general said that anyone partaking in protests is an “enemy of God” and thus eligible for capital punishment according to Iranian law.

Amid all the chaos and internet blackouts, solid statistics are hard to ascertain. Iranian state TV said that just over 3,000 people were killed. But many others believe the real number is far higher, and prominent media venues have reported death tolls of more than 10,000 people.

“Police are indiscriminately shooting into the crowds. The people try to fight back, but they are unarmed and almost entirely defenseless,” said Lana Silk of the Christian organization Transform Iran. She is certain that more than 12,000 Iranians have been killed, and quite possibly 30,000 or more.

“The streets are now being patrolled by tanks and aggressive armed security forces,” Silk said. “People are being rounded up, beaten, imprisoned, and killed. Men, women, and children, it doesn’t matter.”

Anyone who dares to go outside is in danger.

“People are afraid to go to work or to the grocery store for fear of being attacked by police,” Silk added. “Even opening an apartment window puts people at risk of being shot … We know individuals who have been very sick but afraid to go to the hospital for fear of being rounded up together with wounded protesters.”

Though Iran’s regime treats almost none of its people well, it tends to be especially ruthless with its Christian minority. Iran is currently ranked as the 10th-most oppressive country for Christians.

The Iranian government makes no secret about its attitude toward Christianity. Such worship in the country’s main language (Persian, also known as Farsi) is essentially outlawed, as is any Christian literature written in that language.

Officially, less than 1% of Iran’s 90 million people are Christian. But many suspect the true number of Christians is significantly higher and growing rapidly.

You could separate Christians in Iran into two main groups — recognized and unrecognized.

Recognized Christians are typically of Armenian or Assyrian heritage. Iran’s regime allows them to worship if they conduct services in their non-Persian ethnic languages. Recognized Christians are typically treated as second-class citizens and tend to have reduced employment opportunities as well as diminished legal rights. But they also tend to avoid the worst hostility, provided they stay away from Muslim-background converts to Christianity.

Unrecognized Christians, who typically come from Iranian families of Muslim background, are the ones who tend to receive the lion’s share of the Iranian Islamic regime’s abundant wrath. The regime reviles this type of Christian as flesh-and-blood examples of a Western interference they feel seeks to undermine both Islam and Iran.

Such unrecognized Christians have no rights at all. So, they often face arbitrary arrest, inflated criminal charges, and show trials without any interest in truth or chance at exoneration. Their churches, which are underground house churches, by necessity, are at constant risk of hostile intrusion.

Silk explained that Iran’s government “associates Christianity and Judaism with America and Israel, and therefore, all these so-called ‘Zionists’ are also considered a threat to national security, and many who are sentenced will be sentenced for charges related to espionage or being traitors.”

Iran’s former minister of intelligence expressed his dismay over Iranians converting to Christianity and said in 2019 that his office had dispatched agents dedicated to “countering the advocates of Christianity.”

One example of such “countering” surfaced in March 2025, when three Iranian Christian converts were hit with prison sentences totaling 40 years combined.

And yet despite such conditions, many people contend that Iran has the world’s fastest-growing underground Christian scene and has the “highest rate of Christianization in the world.”

There are also reports of many conversions from Islam to the Baha’i and Zoroastrian faiths, as well as many who have given up on religion altogether — just like most Iranians have given up on the future under the current regime.

The current upheaval is of such a scale that Silk suspects the government does not currently have “the bandwidth to be singling out Christians.” She emphasized that right now “all Iranians are living in an unsafe environment.”

The government has done its best to shut down internet access in Iran and prevent people from communicating with the outside world. Silk acknowledged that contact with people inside Iran right now has been “very limited,” but her organization’s contacts within Iran “have been able to get patchy signals and send messages to us.”

Silk believes that Iran’s next government, whenever it may come, will be less repressive. She pointed out that Iran has endured almost 50 years of severe repression, and people are now “dying in large numbers trying to put a stop to it.”

However, Silk said, “We certainly need to be mindful and vigilant to ensure that what comes next represents all the people of Iran and allows Iranians the freedom to live their lives without control or persecution.”

Story by R. Cavanaugh