Why did a Tehran church host a memorial service for Ali Khamenei?

A memorial service for the assassinated former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was held in a Tehran church last week.

The service at the Armenian cathedral of St Sarkis marked 40 days since Khamenei’s death, and was attended by officials including the former Minister of Intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi, and Iranian-Armenian MPs.

Christians of Armenian and Assyrian descent are a recognised religious minority in Iran who have long been used as propaganda tools by the Islamic Republic, which seeks to present a message of inter-religious harmony and tolerance while cracking down on Christian converts and any Armenians or Assyrians who associate with them.

One of the most high-profile recent propaganda wins came last October, when a metro station just outside the St Sarkis cathedral was named after the Virgin Mary.

More recently, Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref posted on X last week that “Iran has been, for centuries, a safe haven for the sound of Christian bells and Jewish prayers alongside the call to prayer”.

Meanwhile, parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Galibaf described the death during the war of an Armenian Christian in Isfahan as a sign of “the unity of all Iranians in defending the homeland”, and wished his soul “eternal rest and peace in the loving embrace of Jesus Christ”.

However, at least five Armenians are among the at least 48 current Christian prisoners of conscience in Iran – all detained on charges related to their religious beliefs or activities.

Among them are Iranian-Armenian church leader Joseph Shahbazian, who was last year handed a second 10-year sentence related to his leadership of a house-church, and Hakop Gochumyan, an Armenian citizen who was arrested while holidaying in Iran three years ago and also sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges related to his visit to a house-church and possession of seven Persian-language copies of the New Testament.

Meanwhile, at least seven Armenians were among the tens of thousands of protesters massacred by Iran’s security forces in January.

According to Iranian-Armenian journalist Fred Petrossian, even though harassment of religious minorities is “institutionalised in the very fabric of the Islamic Republic … representatives of religious minorities find themselves almost forced to defend the interests and discourse of a government that has deprived them of many of their rights, in an attempt perhaps to regain those lost rights or to prevent their further deterioration”. 

He added: “The persecution of unrecognised minorities such as Baha’is and Christian converts is so severe that there is less talk about violations of the rights of the minorities ‘recognised’ in the Constitution.”

Article18’s director, Mansour Borji, has also noted that Armenian and Assyrian church leaders were among the first to welcome the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, when he arrived at the airport, and “in so doing ensured their protection under the new Islamic state”.

The messaging from the Armenian representatives at last week’s memorial service was in keeping with messages past, with an archbishop hailing Khamenei’s “wise leadership” and an MP saying “the people of Iran of every religion, ethnicity and sect have shown during the past 40 days that they support our beloved Iran and the regime”.

The current Christian prisoners of conscience and the families of the at least 22 Christians killed during the recent massacre may have a different perspective, although with the ongoing Internet blackout, such dissenting voices are even more tightly controlled than usual.