Originally published in IsraelNews365
Reza Pahlavi, the activist exiled crown prince of Iran told thousands of young American Christians something the Islamic Republic desperately does not want the world to know: the faith it has spent 46 years trying to eradicate is not dying in Iran. It is multiplying.
The nation that once sheltered the Jewish people under Cyrus and helped the Jews return from exile and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem is today sheltering the Christian faith in its own basements and living rooms, at mortal risk, and Pahlavi came to its crown prince came to Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, to bear witness.
Pahlavi is the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, whose monarchy was toppled by the Islamist revolution of 1979. He has lived in exile ever since, training as the youngest fighter pilot in Iranian history at Reese Air Force Base in Texas before studying political science at the University of Southern California. For more than four decades, he has been the most prominent voice of Iran’s opposition, uniting his people from exile. This week, Liberty University President Dondi Costin introduced him as “a freedom fighter”.
“Good morning and thank you for having me at convocation today on the beginning of Passover and on the cusp of Easter,” Pahlavi began. “I stand before you not only as an Iranian, but as a witness on behalf of millions of my compatriots whose voices have been silenced, whose names you may never hear, but whose courage is reshaping the future of my country. I come to you as the voice of a nation that has been silenced.”
Pahlavi’s cause has become a light in the darkness of despair that has swallowed his country. Between January 8 and 9 alone, more than 30 000 protesters were killed by the regime. Women were beaten to death in the streets. Students were dragged from classrooms and executed. Families were forced to pay for the bullets that killed their own children. The youngest victim whose name the crown prince read aloud was three years old.
For 33 days, 90 million Iranians lived without internet, deliberately blinded by a government trying to strangle a revolution before the world could see it.
“We speak often in this world about injustice. You are charged by your professors and your pastors to fight against it. But what is happening in Iran demands a stronger word; “evil”, he told the students. Because what else do you call a system that murders its own children? What else do you call a regime that wages war both on enemies abroad and on its own people? In recent years, tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed in wave after wave of repression.”
Pahlavi went on to describe some of the horrors in detail, charging the students to support the fight against the Islamist regime. He framed the conflict as a Christian imperative.
“For those of you grounded in faith, there is another truth,” he said. “In Iran today, Christianity is not fading. It is rising quietly, powerfully underground. In homes, in whispers, in hidden gatherings, Iranians are finding faith at great cost. Pastors are imprisoned. Bibles are confiscated. Believers are hunted. Converts are threatened with execution. Families are torn apart. But still they gather.
“Still, they pray. Still, they believe,” Pahlavi said. “Because faith that survives persecution is unbreakable. Because the light shines brightest in the darkest places.”
Christianity is indeed growing in Iran. Multiple ministry organisations tracking Iran report it has one of the fastest-growing Christian populations on earth, with millions of secret believers meeting in homes across the country. The regime knows it, and the arrests and executions of Iranian Christians have accelerated in recent years precisely because the authorities are terrified of what they cannot stop.
“You study stories of persecution in history,” Pahlavi told the students. “Christians have often faced this. In Iran, they are happening every day. There was a time when Iran stood for something very different. Over 2 500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, a Persian king, freed the Jewish people from captivity. He restored their rights. He respected their faith. He is remembered in Scripture not as a tyrant but as a liberator. This is Iran’s true legacy. A nation of tolerance, a nation of dignity, a nation that once stood on the side of freedom.
“The regime that rules Iran today has betrayed that legacy. It does not represent the Iranian people. It fears them and it will fall because of them. The Iranian people are doing their part. They are risking everything. They are leading this fight. But they cannot and should not stand alone.”
Pahlavi’s vision for a free Iran includes a formal peace with Israel, which he has called the Cyrus Accords. It is an expansion of the Abraham Accords that would immediately recognise the State of Israel and build a new alliance between a democratic Iran, Israel, and the Arab world. He has pledged to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and cut all funding to Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah.
He asked the students to show moral clarity as Americans and stand with the Iranian people.
“America must be clear,” he said. “There is no negotiating with evil. There is no reforming a system built on brutality. There is only one path forward: the end of this regime. To the people and leaders of this nation, do not waver. Do not retreat. Do not legitimise those who murder their own people. Stay the course. Finish the job. Stand firmly with the people of Iran, not their oppressors. Because when America stands with moral clarity, it gives strength to those fighting in the shadows.”
The Islamic Republic built its entire identity on crushing religion, whether Jewish, Christian, or ultimately the authentic spiritual conscience of its own Muslim citizens. It is losing that war, the crown prince told students at the world’s largest Christian university. The underground church in Persia is alive, it is growing, and it will outlast every Ayatollah who has tried to extinguish it, he said.
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