Iran’s Christians brace for ‘tsunami of disaster and opportunity’

In the wake of the killing of terrorist leader Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s estimated 1 million Christians are bracing for a possible crisis that could lead to “a tsunami of disaster and a tsunami of opportunity,” according to a Christian who emigrated from the country.

Lazarus Yeghnazar, who now heads 222 Ministries International, a church-planting and training network that includes satellite TV broadcasts and more than 50 underground churches in Iran, spoke to Virginia-based pastor and author Dane Skelton in an interview published by Christianity Today.

He said “there is complete uncertainty and anxiety” in Iran in the aftermath of the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani on Jan. 3.

Iran is believed by some analysts to have the world’s fastest growing church. Under the Islamic regime, said Yeghnazar, Christians have been suffering for the last four decades.

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“Almost all rights and citizens’ privileges have been taken away from them,” he said. “Freedom of worship, freedom of meeting together, are nonexistent.”

He said people who are discovered to be Christians have lost properties, jobs and pensions.

But Iran now “is imploding due to things happening inside, said Yeghnazar, who emigrated from Iran to the U.K. shortly after the Iran-Iraq war.

“Iran is like a bus going down a hairpin-turned mountain road with no brakes. Anybody watching can see that they are going to die. Everybody wonders, ‘When will the driver jump out?’ So, the question is: When will the Ayatollahs jump?”

Some of the mullah leaders have gone to Russia, he said, where they are accepted by “their friend,” Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“But they do not have many other places to go. No Sunni country, like Saudi Arabia, will accept them. Iraq? Maybe, but probably not. Malaysia maybe?”

He believes the regime will provoke the West to attack.

“Who knows how long that will take? But when it comes, it will create a tsunami of disaster and a tsunami of opportunities.”