Dr. Sasan Tavassoli, Iranian-born pastor and scholar, joins us to explain why the uprising in Iran is not just a political revolution—it’s a spiritual earthquake with implications for the entire Islamic world.
Mass protests have erupted across the country—the largest since the Women, Life, Freedom movement of 2022. Reports from CBS, CNN, and other outlets put the death toll at 12,000 or more, with some estimates reaching as high as 20,000. The Iranian rial has lost nearly half its value. Inflation sits at 50 percent, and food prices have climbed 72 percent. Protesters are chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon—my life for Iran.”
And in the middle of all of it, the fastest-growing church movement in the world is holding on—and growing.
On our Prisoners of Hope podcast, we sat down with Dr. Sasan Tavassoli—an Iranian-born pastor, theologian, and scholar of Islam—to understand what is happening, why it matters, and what the Western Church needs to know.
Who Is Dr. Sasan Tavassoli?
Dr. Tavassoli was born and raised in a Shiite Muslim home in Iran. He left the country at 16 during the Iran-Iraq war and came to faith in Jesus Christ in 1985 through a group of American missionaries in Portugal. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has planted and pastored Iranian churches, produced hundreds of teaching programs on Iranian Christian satellite TV networks, and co-founded Pars Theological Center, an Iranian Bible college based in London that trains the next generation of house church leaders inside Iran.
He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Birmingham and has traveled inside Iran multiple times to engage Shiite Muslim clerics in Muslim-Christian dialogue. He has also lectured for Help the Persecuted’s Petaraneh ministry, and much of his teaching material is used in our discipleship programs.
In short, he is one of the most credible and informed voices on the intersection of the Iranian church, the Islamic regime, and what God is doing in the region.
What Is Happening on the Ground
Dr. Tavassoli described a country that has been falling apart for years. Iran has among the world’s highest rates of inflation, unemployment, corruption, depression, divorce, drug addiction, and prostitution. Last summer, the government could not provide drinking water to vast portions of the population. Air pollution has made it physically difficult to breathe on many days. The mullahs have poured the nation’s resources into weapons, proxy wars, and threats against Israel, while basic necessities have collapsed.
The current uprising started, remarkably, in the bazaar of Tehran. The bazaaris—the merchant class—have historically been among the most conservative segments of Iranian society, closely aligned with the Shiite clerics. When they went on strike and began shouting against the regime, it sent a shockwave through the establishment.
Millions of ordinary Iranians followed them into the streets. These are not organized opposition fighters. They are husbands, wives, children, merchants—regular people who have simply had enough.
The regime’s response was immediate and savage. They shut down the internet, cut phone lines, closed the press, and began massacring civilians. Heavy machine guns were mounted on the backs of pickup trucks and fired into crowds. Revolutionary Guards entered hospitals, dragged out wounded people, and executed them. When families went to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones, they were forced to pay a fine—charged for each bullet the regime had fired into their family members.
“The Iranian regime has killed at least 12,000 people in two nights. And God knows how many more people have been killed that we know nothing about. Even Assad, when he first started cracking down on people in Syria, only killed a few hundred in the first weeks. This is something else entirely.”— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
Why This Time Is Different
Some Americans may hear about protests in Iran and think: we’ve seen this before—the government cracks down, life goes on. Dr. Tavassoli was emphatic that this time is fundamentally different, for two reasons.
First, Iranians have broken through the wall of fear. They are no longer willing to be silent, no longer willing to be imprisoned by terror. The regime can kill them, but it cannot make them afraid anymore. That psychological shift is irreversible.
Second, for the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history, the Iranian people are unifying around a single opposition figure: the Crown Prince Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah. Millions are chanting his name. Despite what some Western analysts claim about the absence of a unified opposition, the people on the streets have made their choice.
“This time it’s no longer a protest. Iranians are calling it a national revolution. A regime that only holds on to power with the power of guns and bullets has no legitimacy. This is the final nail in the coffin of the Islamic regime.”
— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
"Jesus Is Running Around Loose in Iran"
In the middle of this political earthquake, something extraordinary has been happening for years. Iran has the fastest-growing church movement in the world. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there may have been only a few hundred Muslim-background believers in the entire country. Today, estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million Iranian Christians.
How? Disillusionment with Islam has opened the door wide. Iranians are encountering Jesus through satellite TV programs—illegal in Iran, yet in millions of homes. They are finding Christian resources online. They are having dreams and visions. They are praying to Jesus for healing, for restored marriages, for freedom from addiction—and Jesus is showing up.
“Jesus is running around loose in Iran. People need to understand that because of the disillusionment with Islam, many Iranians are turning away and they are open to consider alternatives. And in the midst of this spiritual surge, many are coming to faith in Christ.”— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
But every step of growth has come at a cost. Since the revolution, Iranian pastors have been assassinated. Evangelical churches have been shuttered. The only option for Muslim-background believers is the underground house church—secret, illegal, and dangerous. Hundreds of Christians have been jailed. Thousands have fled the country. And since the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the crackdown has intensified. The regime has accused Christians of being Israeli agents and showed footage of a Christian conference center in Turkey, falsely claiming it was a paramilitary training facility.
In 2012, the Supreme Leader himself identified the house church movement as one of the greatest threats to the Islamic Republic. The pace of arrests and persecution has only accelerated since then.
Is the Church a Threat to the Regime?
We asked Dr. Tavassoli directly: is the underground church a genuine threat to the Islamic Republic? His answer was striking.
“The same way that Jesus was a threat to Rome. The message of the gospel is not a military message. But when Christians claim Jesus as their Lord, they are challenging the very foundation of the regime, which is the religion of Islam. The Lordship of Christ challenges the ideology of the Islamic regime. Not in a picking-up-arms kind of way—but in the message of the gospel. And that is subversive.”
— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
The regime knows this. That is why they have always framed their persecution of Christians not as religious oppression. Christians are called Israeli Zionist agents, accused of espionage, charged with treason. The game has been the same for decades. And the stakes are higher now than ever.
Bigger Than the Fall of Berlin
Dr. Tavassoli believes what is unfolding in Iran is not just a political revolution. It is a turning point in the history of Islam itself. He says that forty-seven years of theocratic rule have proven the bankruptcy of radical Islamic ideology to the Iranian people. They have lived under it. They have watched it destroy their country, their economy, their families, and their future. And they are done with it.
“This is bigger than the fall of Berlin. This is like the French Revolution. This is a significant moment in the history of Islam. A new chapter will be written, and we hope to see that the whole understanding of Islam as a violent, radical approach to the world will come to a halt after the experience of the Iranian regime.”
— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
He believes a free Iran will transform the entire Middle East. The funding for terrorism and radical Islamic movements throughout the region will dry up. Iran will become a force for peace rather than violence. And the experience of the Iranian people will challenge foundational elements of Islamic religion worldwide—not through military force, but through the testimony of a nation that lived under Islam’s rule and rejected it.
A Promise from Jeremiah
During our conversation, we shared a passage that has been precious to the Iranian church for generations: Jeremiah 49:38, where God says, “I will set my throne in Elam, ”ancient Elam being modern-day Iran.
Dr. Tavassoli told us that this verse is not just an academic footnote for Iranian believers. It is a living promise. God scattered the Iranian people—nearly seven million now live in exile around the world. But the promise says He will gather them and establish His throne among them.
“A lot of Iranians take that to heart as a promise by God, as a passage that encourages them that God is not done with Iran. God will restore our people and God will bless our people with the presence of the gospel in Iran.”
— Dr. Sasan Tavassoli
How to Pray
• For God’s protection over the Iranian people as the regime continues its brutal crackdown.
• For an end to the bloodshed and for the removal of the Islamic regime.
• For our Help the Persecuted staff and Petaraneh ministry volunteers inside Iran, from whom we have had no communication in five days.
• For the underground house church movement—that believers would be bold, protected, and sustained.
• For the millions of Iranians who are disillusioned with Islam—that they would encounter the living Christ.
• For the fulfillment of Jeremiah 49:38—that God would indeed set His throne in Iran.
• For wisdom for the U.S. administration and the global community in responding to this crisis.
• For the Western Church to wake up, to pray, to fast, and to prepare for the day Iran opens.
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