Right before the bombings began in Iran, our Help The Persecuted team sat down with our Iranian Field Ministers to discuss the unfolding crisis. We knew something was imminent but not the timing. They told us what they saw, what they lost, and why they continue to cling to Christ above all else.
Recent members of our Help The Persecuted team traveled to a neighboring country to sit down face-to-face with two of our Iranian team members. Both live inside Iran. Both were affected by the January massacre. Two additional Iranian team members, Qasem and Laith, joined from Türkiye to interpret and share their own perspectives.
What they told us is difficult to hear. But these are the voices the Prisoners of Hope podcast exists to carry, voices from inside the fire, from people who have every reason to despair and yet refuse to stop meeting, refuse to stop serving, and refuse to stop believing.
A Church Forged Under Pressure
To understand what Iranian believers are enduring now, you need to understand what they’ve been facing for decades. The persecution didn’t start in January.
Fares described a brief season of openness under President Khatami, when Persian-speaking churches operated freely across the country. Then came the Ahmadinejad era. The government saw the wave of Muslim-background conversions to Christianity and responded by systematically shutting down every Persian-speaking church in the country. The last one in Fares’s area was closed, and the church went underground.
Underground house churches became the lifeblood of Iranian Christianity. But the regime followed them there, too. Intelligence services raided homes, confiscated phones, laptops, and Bibles, and arrested worshippers. Interrogators used psychological manipulation first; when that failed, they threatened families—including children. Informants within their own communities betrayed them.
“That persecution was not to stop God’s work between the Muslim people. And thanks to God, most of the people now know him.”
— Fares, Iran
January: “Anything We Could Have Imagined, but Not This”
In January, millions of Iranians took to the streets. Young and old, men and women, teenagers—everyone wanted change after years of economic collapse and repression. What happened next was beyond what anyone anticipated.
Fares described the killing as religiously motivated. When Khamenei gave the order, he framed it through the Quran, invoking passages about killing infidels. The forces who carried out the order did not hesitate. They came on motorcycles in groups of six or seven, armed, firing indiscriminately into crowds. They shot children. They shot elderly women. They fired from close range and from far away. Snipers positioned on mosque rooftops targeted heads and hearts.
The government cut the internet the same day. For ten days, there was total silence.
Ten Days of Darkness
Qasem, who leads our Pedaraneh online ministry from Türkiye—a Persian-speaking program that reaches believers across Iran and Afghanistan—described those ten days as some of the hardest of his life. He sent messages into the darkness, not knowing if the people on the other end were still alive.
“I sent a message to them, and I was waiting for around ten days to have an answer. And I said to myself, maybe they don’t answer me after that, because maybe they are not alive anymore. It was so hard for all of us.”
— Qasem, Türkiye
When the internet finally came back, there was a brief wave of relief as contacts checked in. But then the videos started coming out. A mother who had lost her children. A child who had lost both parents. And for Qasem, the relief gave way to a deeper grief.
“For a couple of days, I was happy. But many videos came out, and I saw the people—a mother who lost her children, a child who lost their parents. And I told myself, it’s not what I wanted. Yes, I have my friends, I have my family, but it doesn’t matter. I lost many, many of our people.”
— Qasem, Türkiye
What the Videos Showed
Fares described scenes that are almost unbearable to recount.
The regime used municipal garbage trucks to collect bodies from the streets at night, ordering sanitation workers to stay home so the trucks could be repurposed. The government set fire to a large bazaar while people were still inside. Those who tried to escape the flames came out with their hands raised in surrender—and were shot dead. Civilians who rushed to the scene with water to fight the fire were blocked from approaching.
Qasem described families being directed to massive halls filled with bodies sealed in black plastic bags. Thousands of bodies in a single location. Families spent hours opening bag after bag, searching for their loved ones. Many of the dead had been shot in the head or in the back—hunted down, arrested, and executed without any legal process.
“Where Is God?”
When the internet returned and believers inside Iran reconnected with Qasem through the Pedaraneh ministry, they all had the same question. It was the same question Qasem himself had been wrestling with.
“They are believers. They said, ‘Brother, where is God?’ We mentioned a lot to them about Jesus, about God—God is alive. It was the only question: where is God when they start to kill people like that? For a while, it was my question too.”— Qasem, Türkiye
But Qasem didn’t stay in that question. He found his way through it—not around the grief, but deeper into it. He described a profound realization: that shared suffering was binding the Iranian church together in ways that shared joy never could.
“The joy can connect us together, but the suffering can connect us on a deeper level. I saw many people who are sad because of others—they didn’t lose their own friends or families, but when they saw a mother crying for her child, they were upset the same as her. I am that mom who lost her child. I am that father looking to find his son. The suffering can make us one again. I love this country more than before—with a lot of pain, but they love each other.”
— Qasem, Türkiye
Mahdi found his anchor in Psalm 23. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, the promise held.
“When I accepted Jesus, I believed something alive was working in my heart. The verse that helped me is Psalm 23: ‘Even if you go through death, I will be with you. I will not leave you alone.’”
— Mahdi, Iran
The Good Samaritan on Iranian Streets
One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when Qasem described watching the parable of the Good Samaritan come to life in the middle of the massacre.
Shopkeepers opened their doors to strangers fleeing gunfire, hiding them inside. In some cases, the police came and killed the shopkeeper too. Homeowners opened their doors to neighbors running for their lives, and government forces pushed through the doors and killed or arrested everyone inside. Ordinary Iranians, many of them not believers, were laying down their lives for strangers.
“I believe Luke chapter 10 came out from the book and went to the Iranian street, and people started to live it. They taught me to be a better Christian and to think about the others. This is the Iran I love.”
— Qasem, Iran
The Church Didn’t Stop
Perhaps the most remarkable thing our team members shared is what the Iranian church did in response to all of this: they kept meeting.
Many ministries shut down their activities after the massacre. The Pedaraneh ministry did not. When some believers were too afraid to come in person, the team opened their online meetings and said: even if one person shows up, we will be here.
“Some people said it’s dangerous for us now, because many ministries stopped their activities. But we continued, because many people from Iran said, ‘We don’t want to lose you again. We want to have our meetings.’ So we said, even if one of them comes, we are here. We didn’t stop. And we believe God will do something. And it’s started.”
— Fares, Iran
Believers inside Iran told our team that the support coming from outside the country—the podcasts, the fasting, the prayers—meant more than we might realize. Knowing that someone out there cares, that they are not forgotten, gives them the strength to keep going.
“When I saw that Help The Persecuted had some podcasts, or they were supporting fasting or praying for Iranians, it was so encouraging to me. Because when you have someone caring about you, reminding you to pray for you, and you are not alone—it means a lot to us. Maybe now we are weak because we are upset, we are sad. But we know God will raise up all of us again, and we will laugh again.”
— Mahdi, Iran
What Your Giving Makes Possible
Our team members described the practical work that Help The Persecuted does inside Iran through the Pedaraneh ministry: emergency relief funds, food baskets, help with legal documents and immigration, counseling for traumatized believers, conferences and discipleship, and ongoing support for underground church leaders.
Fares explained the logic simply: when a believer has an economic crisis, they stop serving in their church. Help The Persecuted remove that obstacle so they can continue ministering. And Mahdi framed it in language that stopped our whole team in its tracks.
“What Help The Persecuted and the donors are doing in our country reminds me of Isaiah 61—the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, ‘I came to give a crown in place of sorrow, to fix all the destroyed walls, to release all the prisoners.’ What the donors do—this is the same as the mission of Jesus Christ, what he wants to do for the people.”
— Mahdi, Iran
What Steadfast Faith Looks Like
We asked each of our team members the same closing question: in the midst of so much suffering, what does it mean to be steadfast in your faith right now?
Laith answered,
“Steadfast is hard. But I believe that God sees me every time. If I live in a good situation, God sees me. If I live in a bad situation, or persecution, or suffering, or sickness—again, God sees me. And he gives us strength. He gives us peace. And he loves us really, like his children. This is steadfast for me.”
— Laith, Türkiye
Qasem replied:
“When you go to the Bible, Jesus didn’t promise you everything would be good or nice. He said you can see this. And we know God is alive. We have the Holy Spirit. They did to him on the cross—they killed him on the cross. So we know the world is not safe for anyone. And in these days, we just remember: still, God is good, and he will protect us.”— Qasem, Iran
How to Pray
• For the physical safety of Fares, Mahdi, Qasem, Laith, and every believer serving through the Pedaraneh ministry inside Iran.
• For protection over underground house churches as they continue to meet in defiance of the regime.
• For comfort and healing for the families who lost children, parents, and loved ones in the January massacre.
• For the believers asking “Where is God?”—that the Holy Spirit would meet them in their grief and draw them deeper into faith.
These are the people you support through Help The Persecuted. Real men and women who watched their neighbors die in the streets, who send messages into the darkness not knowing if anyone will answer, who open their meeting rooms and say “even if one person comes, we’ll be here,” and who look at everything you give and see the mission of Jesus Christ, Isaiah 61 lived out. Thank you for standing with them in some of the hardest days of their lives.