Christians in Iran were sentenced to a combined total of over 250 years in prison last year — a sixfold increase compared to 2023, a report released on Monday revealed.

In all, 96 Christians were sentenced to a combined 263 years behind bars in 2024. That’s compared to 22 Christians sentenced to 43½ years in 2023.

The report, released by Article 18 in collaboration with Open Doors, CSW and Middle East Concern, is titled ‘The Tip of the Iceberg’ to “draw attention to how many more cases that go unreported,” according to the religious advocacy group.

This was partly due to the “huge uptick in arrests in the second half of 2023, which required judicial processing,” the 45-page report noted.  

For over a century, Iranian 89 million citizens have struggled toward democracy. During the last 40 years, after the ousting of the Shah in 1979, the Iranian people have been subjugated by an oppressive theocracy called the “Islamic Republic,” with a religious “Supreme Leader” overseeing all aspects of life.

An Iranian law — known as Article 500 — allows for 10 years’ imprisonment for those found to have engaged in “propaganda contrary to the holy religion of Islam” while also receiving financial or organizational support from outside the country.

“Over 70% of the charges against Christians in 2024 were filed under the amended Article 500,” the report added.

These grim statistics, the report noted, was culled from the leak of three million case files of the Tehran judiciary between 2008 and 2023.

The report highlighted a detailed analysis of these leaked files, including 10 key insights regarding the systematic repression of Christians in Iran. For instance, Christians are questioned about their beliefs and forced to recant, for setting up home churches and possessing a Bible is treated as contraband and evidence of a crime.

In 2022, Mohammad Nasirpour, the Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran, argued the following in an indictment against four Iranian Christians:

“Christianity, as one of the divine religions, has the largest population among religions, comprising three main branches: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, with followers in Iran primarily of Armenian and Assyrian ethnicity. In the realm of threat assessment, Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the Catholic and Orthodox denominations are considered aligned with the Islamic Revolution and even seen as contributing to the advancement of its objectives. However, Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the Protestant denomination, with their evangelical nature and mission to Christianize Iran, are perceived as a security threat to the Islamic Revolution, aimed at undermining the Islamic foundation of the Islamic Republic. It could be said that Persian-speaking evangelical movements are supported by fundamentalist evangelical Christians and Zionists.”

Reiterating these anti-Christian beliefs, the report also highlighted the words of a deputy prosecutor who wrote the following to the head of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court:

“The evangelical Christian sect, serving the interests of global imperialism, targets the faith of Muslim citizens, destabilizing families and spreading immorality by attempting to convert people from Shi’a beliefs and promoting libertinism; thereby working towards the soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic.”

As a result, there has also been a notable increase in lengthy individual sentences, with five Christians receiving 10-year prison terms and another a 15-year sentence — all on account of charges related to their faith or religious activities.

The report said the increase in prison terms was “partly due to a huge uptick in arrests in the second half of 2023 which required judicial processing, resulting in a surge of sentencing in 2024 of over four times as many Christians. Notably, five Christians received 10-year prison terms, while another was sentenced to 15 years — a stark example of the intensifying penalties imposed.

Meanwhile, the reported added, the 96 Christians sentenced last year “received fines totaling nearly $800,000. … [Iranian] judges have increasingly been adding supplementary punishments such as fines on top of prison sentences. Other punishments frequently employed against Christians in recent years have included terms of internal exile, deprivation of social rights, enforced religious ‘re-education’ and travel bans.”

Clemente Lisi is the executive editor of Religion Unplugged. He previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on X @ClementeLisi.