{"id":5622,"date":"2026-07-30T07:07:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/historic-church-destroyed-by-regime\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T07:07:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:07:05","slug":"historic-church-destroyed-by-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/historic-church-destroyed-by-regime\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Church Destroyed by Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On June 4, 2026, workmen under orders from the Iranian regime bulldozed the Evangelical Church of Mashhad, Iran, without explanation. The church was around 80 years old but had been closed by Iranian officials for more than two decades. Still, some Iranian Christians hoped that it would one day reopen, despite a 2012 government ban on Iranian churches holding any services in Farsi. &ldquo;I was sitting with a brother from that church a few hours after it happened,&rdquo; said a front-line worker. &ldquo;He was crying.&rdquo; The Iranian government has now seized the historic St. Peter Evangelical Church in Tehran, evicting 20 families that live there. &ldquo;Please continue to pray for our brothers and sisters in Iran,&rdquo; the worker requested.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/globalprayerguide\/iran\/\">Click here<\/a> to find out about Christian persecution in Iran and learn how to pray.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.icommittopray.com\/request\/3015\/christians-in-iran\/\" target=\"_blank\">Post a prayer for Christians in Iran on iCommitToPray.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 4, 2026, workmen under orders from the Iranian regime bulldozed the Evangelical Church of Mashhad, Iran, without explanation. The church was around 80 years old but had been closed by Iranian officials for more than two decades. Still, some Iranian Christians hoped that it would one day reopen, despite a 2012 government ban on Iranian churches holding any services in Farsi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-5622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-commit-to-pray","tag-iran","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Historic Church Destroyed by Regime - Stories<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/historic-church-destroyed-by-regime\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Historic Church Destroyed by Regime - Stories\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On June 4, 2026, workmen under orders from the Iranian regime bulldozed the Evangelical Church of Mashhad, Iran, without explanation. The church was around 80 years old but had been closed by Iranian officials for more than two decades. 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