Amid soaring inflation, war and intense persecution, Iran’s children—especially young Christians—face trauma and fear.
Newsroom (03/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) As Iran reels from runaway inflation, a deepening mental health crisis, drug addiction among adults and the fallout from June’s 12-Day War with Israel, it is the country’s children who are paying the heaviest price, according to Lana Silk, CEO of the ministry Transform Iran.
“Iranian children right now are victims of their wider society and the struggles that their parents face,” Silk told reporters this week. “There’s a lot of very serious economic hardship in Iran today, and that is affecting the adult population in their mental health. There are a lot of people turning to drugs and alcohol. There’s a lot of joblessness and struggling to put food on the table. So that worry and stress and struggle, of course, is going to permeate the whole household. And children are very helpless in these kinds of situations.”
The pressure is dramatically compounded for the small minority of Christian children. Iran remains ninth on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. Since Israel’s targeted airstrikes on Tehran in June sparked the brief but intense 12-Day War, the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus has intensified its hunt for Christian converts.
“The government is really scrutinizing everything and desperately trying to weed out the Christians,” Silk said. At school, Christian children must pretend to sympathize with Islam or risk denunciation. “These children have been very careful at school to toe the line and keep up pretenses that they are sympathetic, at least, to the Muslim faith. So all of that carries its toll.”
Even the approach of Christmas offers no public respite. While Iranians may treat 25 December as a secular “festival” and decorate homes, any open celebration of Christ’s birth must remain hidden.
“People can still decorate their homes and make a fuss of that time of year,” Silk explained, “but as soon as you get into a truly Christian celebration of what happened 2000 years ago, then that’s all going to be kept quiet.”
For the growing number of Iranian Christian children now living as refugees—primarily in Turkey—the dangers of open worship are lower, but trauma runs deep. “A lot of the issues they face really affect their sense of well-being, even mental health, depression, anxiety, panic attacks,” Silk said.
It is against this bleak backdrop that Transform Iran has launched Operation Christmas Joy, a six-week program running through the holiday season. Inside Iran and in refugee communities, families gather in secret or semi-secret settings to hear the Christmas story, sing, and receive practical gifts tailored to each child’s needs.
“We talk a lot about joy and peace and hope at Christmas time,” Silk said. “We thought, well, how do we share the gospel message with children and truly allow it to penetrate their lives so that it does birth joy in their hearts? We want them to be laughing again and dancing again and enjoying community.”
In Turkey, where thousands of Iranian refugees wait in limbo, the gatherings double as outreach. “The Christian families can say our holy celebration is coming up,” Silk noted. “It’s a great way just to gather a community, and of course, through that, then we get to bless these families, practically and spiritually, sharing truth.”
Whether inside Iran’s tense borders or in the bleak refugee camps beyond them, the ministry’s goal remains the same: to remind children—Christian or not—that they are seen, loved, and offered a hope that outlasts the regime’s oppression and the region’s wars.
As Iran enters another subdued Christmas season under sanctions and surveillance, Operation Christmas Joy is one of the few initiatives daring to bring light to a generation that has known mostly darkness.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from mnnonline.org
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