Tehran set to inaugurate Holy Mary Metro Station amidst continuance of Christian Persecutions.

Nov 2025 : According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “conversion by Muslims to other faiths is forbidden under most interpretations of Sharia Law and converts are considered apostates“, a crime punishable by promulgating death sentence in some cases.

In Iran, owning Bible is a serious offence, which leads to percussion. However, the prevalent radical ultraisms are on the verge of transforming as the Iranian administration has decided to flip their dogmatic approach.

The Maryam-e Moqaddas Metro Station, is going to be rechristened as Holy Mary Station, a relief of Christ walking on water decorates a vestibule, and his mother Mary is depicted, larger than life, praying among flowers. A plaque that declares, “the message of Jesus Christ was the salvation of humans from darkness, ignorance, corruption, depravity and discrimination”. The Tehran metro station is located within a stone’s throw of the Saint Sarkis Cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

State administration have characterised the name and motif of the station as a gesture of cultural coexistence. Mary is also a venerated figure in Islam. But the nearly completed metro station, which is due to be officially opened in early November, has raised eyebrows in a country where religious converts from Islam have been executed and Christian worship in the national Persian language is forbidden.

Among scores of Christians currently imprisoned in the country, one is an Armenian citizen sentenced to 10 years for “illegal Christianity activities” after being discovered with several Persian-language bibles among his belongings.

On October 29th, the Iranian Security Chief has lauded the christening of this new station for its potential to play a “significant role in diplomacy”. Resonating with his speech, experts widely believe that the new metro station is being made largely to sanitize the Islamic country’s image on the international stage. “It is to say to the West and the outside world that look, we are tolerant, we honour Christianity and other religious minorities”.

Estimates of Iran’s Christian population varies widely, but a 2020 survey from the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) reported 1.5% of respondents identified as Christian. That figure would extrapolate to hundreds of thousands across the country. Most Christian converts practice their faith in secret among small groups of friends and in high-risk “house churches”, which are frequently raided by the authorities.

Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab a Netherlands-based researcher of GAMAAN reiterated that an increasing number of younger Iranians are turning away from Islam amid waves of recent anti-government protests. “The younger people are turning away from Islam, the more they identify with labels such as ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheist’ and that means that in a situation in which the majority religion is being doubted, some people will not choose, for example, non-religiosity, but they will choose another religion, like Christianity”, he said. Furthermore, the trend toward Christianity must be seen in a bigger pattern of opposition to the theocratic regime of Iran.

Among the turn away from Islam documented by GAMAAN, Iran has significantly stepped up its persecution of Christians, with a reported total of 96 converts sentenced to a combined total of 263 years in prison last year, compared with 22 Christians sentenced in 2023.

Ethnic Armenians are permitted to practice Christianity in Iran within strict limits, including a ban on services held in Persian, and potential execution for attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity. Congregations are monitored closely by the authorities and service times must be agreed on with the authorities in advance.

Several representatives of the Armenian church have previewed the metro station on October 22 ahead of its official opening. During that tour, the head of Tehran’s metro system called the facility “one of the most beautiful stops in a wider infrastructure project, where human faith and the special respect Iranians have for their Armenian and Christian compatriots merge”.

On the same day the Armenian clergy toured the metro station, 61 years old Christian Mina Khajavi was released after serving nearly two years in the notorious Evin prison for hosting a home church, which the Iranian authorities deemed was “acting against national security”.

Suvro Sanyal – Team Maverick