The U.S. State Department has classified Iran as a “country of particular concern” for “having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of Iran, see here.
“‘Simply being a Christian is enough to get you arrested’ in Iran: British government report,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News, October 31, 2022:
A shocking new report from the British government details that the violent persecution of the Christian minority population continues unabated in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Simply being a Christian is enough to get you arrested” in the Muslim-majority country, noted the United Kingdom’s study on Christians and Christian converts in Iran. The report said that “many arrests reportedly took place during police raids on religious gatherings” and that “Christians, particularly evangelicals and converts from Islam, continued to experience disproportionate levels of arrest and detention.”
Late last month, the United Kingdom published its study detailing the severe mistreatment of Iranian Christians, who compose between 500,000 and 800,000 people of an estimated total population of 86.7 million in 2022. The number of Iranian Christians may exceed 1 million, based on other estimates, noted the study.
According to the report, 99.6% of Iran’s population identifies as Muslim, with Iran classififying [sic] Twelver Ja’afari Shia Islam as its state religion.
When asked what the U.S. and other world powers can do regarding the crackdown on Iranian Christians, Mansour Borji, an Iranian Christian who is the director of the religious freedom NGO Article 18, wrote in an email to Fox News Digital: “We believe the world leaders can play a positive role in helping the persecuted faith communities and end the religious apartheid in Iran. One of the effective measures that Western governments can take to help is sanctions targeting Iranian oligarchs and their families that are close to the regime, living abroad, by blocking their assets, imposing travel bans against them.”…
According to the U.S. State Department spokesperson, “Since 1999, the United States has designated Iran annually as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in or tolerating ‘particularly severe violations of religious freedom.’ The designation is based on information from all relevant sources, including the annual International Religious Freedom Report.”…
