ISTANBUL (RNS) — Hormoz Shariat preaches to a congregation of millions of Iranian Christians around the world, those who have scattered because of repression at home and those who, having stayed, have long been the target of arrest by Iranian authorities, frequently accused of being tools of Western powers.

The Tehran-born, now Texas-based founder of Iran Alive Ministries runs an online ministry that streams 24 hours a day, sharing the gospel in Farsi, the language of Iran. Shariat also organizes a network of Iranian Christian leaders both in Iran and in the diaspora. In an interview with Religion News Service on Sunday, Shariat said since the news that Ayatollah Khamenei had been killed in a strike Saturday, plans for escape and emigration are being put on hold in the hopes that a brighter future may be dawning.

“This is a day of rejoicing and hope for the people of Iran, who have suffered for so long over the years,” Shariat told Religion News Service Sunday. “With this death of the supreme leader, everybody is firstly happy and hopeful, but are still asking, ‘What’s next? Is this the end of the regime or not?’ That’s the big question right now for everybody.”

The Islamic Republic acknowledges the ethnic Armenian Assyrian and Chaldean churches, with more than 100,000 members between them, as protected religious minorities, giving them representation in the parliament and allowing the establishment of churches and religious services — on the condition that they don’t operate outside their ethnic communities or conduct services in the Farsi language of Iran’s Muslim majority.

That’s not true for Protestant and evangelical Christian communities in Iran, who are largely made up of converts from Muslim or at least nominally Muslim families, yet it’s the fastest growing religion in Iran, with estimates ranging between 1 and 3 million believers. 

Without the right to peaceably assemble, their religious expression often takes place underground and in home churches or, more often than not, online.

“The fastest growing segment of our ministry is online churches, even though we have been helping underground churches, and we do have underground churches, as we have done for over 20 some years,” Shariat explained. 

“When an Iranian comes to Christ, they say, ‘I’d rather be online and watch you and get your teaching, and not go to a house church,’ even though we encourage them,” Shariat said. “The reason they give me is very convincing. They’re saying, ‘why should I go to a house church and put my life in danger? Because if one of us is not careful, the rest of us get in trouble; attending a house church is a crime.’”

He noted that those arrested for gathering in or running underground churches have received long prison sentences, as much as 15 or 20 years. Human rights watchdog groups focused on Iran noted that prosecutions of Christians jumped six-fold between 2024 and 2025, with over 300 cases in Tehran alone. 

“The Christian community in Iran is facing a crisis. The Iranian authorities are abducting growing numbers of Christians and throwing absurd national security charges at them in order to imprison them for years for doing nothing other than peacefully practicing their faith,” Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, said in a 2025 press release. “The Islamic Republic is terrified of its growing Christian convert community and is trying to crush it the way it crushes all perceived threats: through sham prosecutions in kangaroo courts, violent brutality, and years locked behind bars.” 

“Sometimes I feel the government of Iran believes in the power of the church more than we do, because they are so alarmed when Christians get together,” Shariat added. 

For those reasons, among others, converts to Christianity have been among the first looking for escape from the Islamic Republic, but it’s no easy task. 

“Leaving Iran is not easy. … they know leaving Iran means years of suffering,” Shariat said. 

Though some have made it to North America and Europe, where Iranian immigrant communities have largely found freedom and economic success, others have spent years in transitional countries like Turkey and Pakistan under threat of deportation back to Iran. 

Even for those who have made it to the U.S., more recently they have been under threat of deportation as the Trump administration has sent hundreds of Iranian asylum seekers back to Iran, putting them at greater threat than if they had never left. 

“Even those who were planning to leave Iran, they’ve put their plans on hold to see what happens. I am not hearing of a mass exodus right now,” Shariat said. “The mood is basically, ‘let’s wait and see, maybe this is the end.’”

Nonetheless, contact with his flock has become difficult in the last few days, with internet and communications shut down all over the country. 

“The connection is very hard. We only have a few people who can contact us through Starlink,” he said. “Not many people have Starlink, and having a Starlink dish is punished by execution.”

“We have many believers and leaders inside Iran that we haven’t been able to have continuous connection with since Thursday,” he added.

Nonetheless, his organization and others in the U.S. have been working to support their community leaders and Christian families in Iran — as they supported those who had lost loved ones in the recent Iranian protest crackdowns. They’ve also been working to find new satellite avenues to continue broadcasting into Iran for as long as the conflict continues.