Five Christian Converts in Iran Get Long Prison Terms

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In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the government’s war to stop Muslims from converting to Christianity continues, as the monstrous regime in Tehran lashes out in all directions at those thought to be undermining the foundations of their regime. Now five Christians, converts from Islam, have been given long prison sentences for having done so. They are, you see, a “threat to national security.” More on their calvary can be found here.

A seriously ill Iranian Christian convert who broke her spine in Evin Prison is among five Christians handed combined prison terms totaling more than 50 years, a rights group said.

The national security offenses for which they were convicted involve house-church worship and Christian activity online, according to UK-based rights groups Article 18.

They met, in secret, in their homes which is where they conducted services, praying together. This is the “house-church” worship that the Islamic Republic forbids. They also shared their beliefs on social media: a crime against Islam and the Iranian state.

“The trial bore many hallmarks of a lack of due process: lengthy pre-trial detention, heavy bail demands, and the use of vague security-related articles to criminalize religious practice,” Article18 director Mansour Borji told Christian Daily International.

“Case files describe the distribution of Bibles and Christian texts, and efforts to share theology with others, as evidence justifying the sentences,” he added.

Imagine how dangerous the tottering regime in Tehran perceived these inoffensive Christian converts to be. This handful of converts may have handed out a Bible or two, met in their houses to hold Christian services, and discussed Christian doctrine among themselves, but the regime perceives them as a threat, a danger to the Shi’a theocracy, for if those converts are not severely punished, how many others in Iran will be tempted to convert? 

The next time you hear an apologist for the regime insist that there is “freedom of religion in Iran,” don’t respond to such idiocy. Merely recite the five names of the latest Christian converts to be imprisoned and the length of their sentences:Joseph Shahbazian (10 years), his wife Lida Shahbazian, (8 years), Nasser Navard Gol-Tapeh (10 years), another woman whose name has not been disclosed for reasons unknown (10 years), and Aida Najaflou (15 years).

This fixation upon harmless converts as threats to the state must be seen in context. Over the past few decades, the Iranian government has spent well over $100 billion on its nuclear program. Think only of what it cost to build the vast arrays of thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, that were placed deep underground at Natanz, and deep inside a mountain at Fordow. Those hideously expensive nuclear facilities now lie in ruins — “obliterated,” according to the former head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen — after Israeli and American attacks this past June. More than $100 billion spent on the nuclear program have gone up in smoke.

In addition, Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars on weapons, training, and logistical support for its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and to prop up the regime of Bashar Assad during the Syrian civil war. Now the IDF has battered Hamas, which has lost close to 30,000 men in Gaza; Hezbollah’s prewar arsenal of 150,000 missiles and rockets has been reduced by 80%; Bashar Assad’s regime has been toppled, and the IDF has systematically reduced all of his Iran-supplied arsenal of weapons to smithereens after he fled to Moscow. In Damascus, the new regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa is implacably opposed to Iran for having supported Assad in the civil war.

The people of Iran are surely infuriated about the choices that their despotic rulers made over the past several decades. Those rulers spent a hundred billion dollars on their nuclear program, now in ruins, and tens of billions of dollars on Iran’s proxies in the region — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Bashar Assad’s arsenal — that the IDF has now pulverized.

What, they are thinking to themselves, could we have done with all that money if sanity had prevailed? As the drought in Iran continues and intensifies, Iranians are asking questions such as these: How many desalination plants could have been built with a hundred billion dollars? How many leaky pipelines, all over Iran, now wasting millions of gallons of water, could have been replaced? How much money could have been spent to husband water resources by utilizing the drip irrigation methods perfected by Israeli farmers? How much water could have been produced out of the ambient air if the government had purchased tens of thousands of atmospheric water generator (AWG) machines?

After decades of ignoring the plight of its own people, the Iranian regime is deeply threatened. Hence the crackdown on even the slightest deviation from the accepted ideological and theological norms.