Ignoring Iran’s Persecution of Christians

CHRISTMAS is a good time to take stock of oppressed Christians around the world. So why not this year look at a place that Washington tries so hard to warm up to, and therefore may overlook?

Iran’s attempt to present itself as a champion of its Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities, combined with comparisons to the murderous religious cleansing in areas controlled by ISIS, can lull us into believing that all is hunkydory in the land of the mullahs.

It isn’t. Ayatollah Khomeini’s heirs have learned his lesson well: Even if you present your country as pluralistic and accommodating, remember that all nonShiites are far from your equal. Keep them in check — or better yet, imprison and execute them.

President Hassan Rouhani made a splash in 2013 when, during his annual New York trip for the UN General Assembly, he brought along the sole Jewish member of Iran’s parliament. See, said some ardent supporters of America’s Iran rapprochement, the mullahs aren’t as bigoted as others in the region. They tolerate minorities. Especially these new, improved moderates.

The 8,000 Jews left in Iran may not be mo lested outright, but they’re barred from teaching Hebrew and banned from contacting relatives in Israel, let alone visiting Judaism’s holy sites there. But the lot of Iran’s halfmillion Christians is even worse.

Christian leaders were executed even as the efforts to topple the shah were ongoing in 1979. The revolution’s ideology reserves a special contempt for Baha’is and Christians. That’s because those believers are considered stray Muslims who’ve deserted their faith, explains Menashe Amir, director of Israel Radio’s Farsi Service and a veteran mullah chronicler.

Christian leaders were therefore targeted and executed by mobs, and by the state, since the first days of the revolution, but under “moderate” Rouhani things haven’t changed much. “Christians most commonly prosecuted appear to be converts from Muslim backgrounds or those that proselytize or minister to Iranian Muslims,” wrote Ahmed Shaheed, the UN watchdog on human rights in Iran, in a 2014 report.

“While most cases involving Christians are tried in revolutionary courts for national security crimes, some Christians face charges in public criminal courts for manifestation of religious beliefs,” Shaheed added. In one October 2013 case, a court sentenced four Christians to 80 lashes each for drinking wine during communion.

Among dozens who languish in Iranian jails for pursuing their Christian faith, Americans rightly pay extra attention to Saeed Abedini, the Idaho pastor who was arrested in Iran in 2012 and sentenced to eight years in the notorious Evin prison for “undermining national security.”

As many critics of Obama’s Iran deal noted, we failed to include in it a demand for an unconditional release of American hostages in Iran. In addition to Abedini, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and former Marine Amir Hekmati are also held in jails on trumpedup charges. Former CIA contractor Robert Levinson, who was kidnapped in 2007, has been missing ever since. And those are the cases we know about. This week, Secretary of State John Kerry assured the mullahs that the administration will override recent congressional legisla tion changing visa waivers for world travelers to the United States. Iran would be exempted, Kerry vowed. Why? Tehran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, threatened to cancel the Iran nuclear deal if the legislation stands.

It’d be nice if Kerry, or anyone else in the administration, could every once in a while retort by demanding that unless Iran changes its behavior, we won’t deliver our end of the deal either. For starters, why in Sam Hill didn’t we demand that, before even talking, Iran release all American hostages and refrain from further American hostage taking — a mullah habit since the early days of the revolution?

And even that’s not enough. We should have demanded, and still must, changes in the appalling humanrights situation in Iran. As we rightly denounce any singling out of Muslims for crimes committed in the name of Islam, we also need to demand some reciprocity from Iran.

Time to turn up the heat and highlight religious persecution in Iran — of Baha’i, Jews, Sunnis and, yes, Christians. After all, ’tis the season.