(RNS) — Iran’s theocratic regime has long repressed religious minorities, persecuting groups deemed blasphemous, unorthodox or who questioned their religious rule. The ongoing war, combined with the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, creates a moment of great uncertainty for all Iranians, but especially for minorities, who are particularly vulnerable. What happens in the coming days and how the United States responds will determine much about their future.
When most of us think of Iran, images of black-turbaned ayatollahs and embassy hostages come to mind. However, the country is incredibly diverse and becoming more so. Large groups of non-Muslim religious minorities exist throughout the rugged country, which is more than twice the size of Texas.
According to U.S. State Department reports, the exact size of Iran’s Christian community is unknown, but estimates range from 117,000 to more than 1.2 million. They are clustered in a variety of historic denominations, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholics, as well as newer Protestant groups, including evangelical Christians. While all live under the same repression, the regime enforcers have harshly targeted those who proselytize. Pastors have been jailed and many converts forced to flee.
Other minorities, such as Jews, Zoroastrians, Sabean-Mandaeans and Yarsanis, face similar pressures. But the faith that faces the most systematic repression are the Baháʼís, who are believed to number around 300,000.
The monotheistic Baháʼí faith, which preaches tolerance, was born in what is now Iran in the mid-19th century. Despite its deep roots in the country, the Islamic Republic views its adherents as heretical, triggering decades of discrimination and violence. Baháʼís have been executed for “waging war against God,” and the community has experienced relentless surveillance, harassment and threats. Bahá’í businesses have been closed, homes bulldozed and children systematically excluded from higher education.
Since the latest government crackdown following the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025, Human Rights Watch highlighted a wave of arrests and property confiscations that have swept through Baháʼí communities, and many have been the subject of allegations of being Israeli “spies.”
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)
Even among the Muslims who make up the vast majority of Iran’s 87 million people, general attitudes about faith are changing, despite what the regime wants to believe. Decades of religious repression by the clerical class have undermined an authentic commitment to Shiism. Protests against the hijab mandate and harsh crackdown after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 pushed many away. This trend was already visible in 2020, when a survey found that over 45% of respondents identified as having no faith, being atheist, agnostic, humanist or spiritual. Other studies show an increase in conversion to Christianity.
Iran’s religious landscape, in sum, is dynamic and changing. The current conflict, which could lead to a power vacuum, makes it anyone’s guess what will happen next. What we know is that any sudden removal of leadership, however objectionable, rarely leads to positive human rights outcomes. Iraq proved this point, and Libya continues to do so.
The United States has the ability to influence events, if it chooses, to protect religious minorities and promote governance that defends religious freedom. But it will take a concerted effort to integrate religious freedom into a post-conflict Iran.
Notably, no administration, Republican or Democratic, has been willing to incorporate human rights and religious freedom into the high-level negotiations around Iran’s nuclear ambitions or its disruptive role in the region. The Obama administration’s signature effort, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known more widely as the Iran nuclear deal) did not mention religious freedom, let alone human rights. Separate congressional legislation forced the matter, but such concerns always remained separate from the larger negotiations.
It’s likely President Donald Trump will pursue a similar approach. In just over one year in office, regime changes have come to Syria, Venezuela and Iran, with the last two because of Trump’s decision to engage militarily. Examining his administration’s posture elsewhere doesn’t suggest he will press human rights and religious freedom in Iran.
Syrian religious minorities continue to face attacks, and the lifting of U.S. sanctions came without any effort to leverage them to protect minorities. Trump’s engagements with President al-Sharaa did not focus on these issues. In Venezuela, the Maduro regime remains in place, absent only its namesake, and a democratization project appears indefinitely shelved, despite María Corina Machado’s best efforts to entice Trump to do more. Hints of a Nicaraguan-type repression of religious groups, meanwhile, have gone unanswered.
With Iran, the administration’s justification for the attacks has varied from concern about nuclear missiles to the brutal repression of protesters. Trump has spoken of future negotiations after the conflict, but there is no indication that religious freedom, human rights or democracy are priorities. The president’s Saturday address on social media mainly focused on justifying the war, as did his statement from the White House on Monday. Absent in these and in phone conversations with journalists were any mentions of human rights.
Despite the killing of key Iranian leaders, some U.S. officials are reportedly skeptical that real regime change will come. Searching for moderates — a difficult term to define in the Iranian context — to lead the next government will likely only focus on their attitudes toward Israel and the United States. But how will they view religious diversity in their own country? The new members of the transition council, among them a judge who said protesters in January should receive “no leniency,” are hardliners.
If “mission accomplished” in Iran simply means removing its nuclear capabilities without addressing religious and other types of persecution, a huge problem will remain. Any post-conflict talks must include considerations for religious freedom, human rights and self-governance.
History demonstrates that such bundling can work to advance both the U.S.’s interests and its values. In the mid-1970s, U.S. and Western European negotiators leveraged the Soviets’ interest in the recognition of post-World War II borders to convince the USSR to include human rights commitments in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. These explicit human rights guarantees were publicly disseminated across the Soviet bloc, creating a framework that empowered dissidents and held regimes accountable. A skeptical Henry Kissinger later acknowledged that the human rights provisions helped accelerate the Soviet Union’s collapse, and our sustained support for human rights and religious freedom then ultimately contributed to the emergence of Eastern European states that are now among the United States’ strongest allies.
In our interconnected world, commitment to religious freedom and human rights today can do even more to quell destructive behavior tomorrow. Policymakers must recognize the cost of ignoring human rights violations. Now that the United States has eliminated Iran’s despotic leaders, it is in our national interest to see Iran become a rights-respecting nation. Anything less will leave more problems for the future.
(Knox Thames is a former special adviser for religious minorities at the U.S. State Department and the author of “Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
