By Fred Petrossian

At a time when systemic discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities in Iran continues unabated, the opening of a new metro station named after Mary and adorned with Christian symbols stands as a striking contradiction. 

It is akin to apartheid-era South Africa building a subway decorated with Black icons, while leaving its racist laws intact. You can decorate the stick of oppression — but for the victims, it remains the same stick.

In Iran, (Armenian and Assyrian) Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews are recognised as official minorities, yet they have long faced numerous forms of discrimination. 

As different sources have reported previously, the Armenian population has dropped to one-fifth of what it was before the revolution of 1979, even as Iran’s overall population has doubled. 

This dramatic decline reflects the impact of institutionalised discrimination in areas such as inheritance, blood money (diyah), and employment discrimination, relegating Armenians to the status of second or third-class citizens.

For Christian converts, the situation is far worse. This community — now the largest Christian population in Iran — is not even afforded the recognition of citizenship. 

Like the Baháʼís, Yarsanis, Zikris, and Mandaeans, they have been turned into  ghosts: people without a voice, without the right to worship, without the right to gather.

While the statue of the Virgin Mary stands in a Tehran metro station in the name of “interfaith respect”, hundreds of converts to the faith of that same Christ are imprisoned for their belief. They are denied churches and cemeteries and live under the constant threat of being accused of apostasy.

Security forces have repeatedly raided their homes merely because a few Christians gathered to read the Bible. Religious books, crosses, and even personal belongings have been confiscated. 

Armenians and Assyrians who associate with converts are also targeted. 

Today, Joseph Shahbazian, an Iranian-Armenian Christian former prisoner of conscience, remains detained eight months after his re-arrest and faces a retrial. 

Hakop Gochumyan, an Armenian citizen detained since his arrest while holidaying in Tehran in August 2023, is serving a 10-year sentence — one of his “crimes” being possession of seven Persian-language Bibles. 

In previous years, prominent Iranian-Armenian church leaders such as bishops Haik Hovsepian and Tateos Michaelian were murdered, while Christian convert and reverend Hossein Soodmand was executed by hanging in Mashhad for his “apostasy.”

On the propaganda front, the Iranian government has long used expensive symbolic gestures to project an image of tolerance — from showcasing approved minority MPs in official delegations, to the Supreme Leader’s staged Christmas visits with the families of Christian war martyrs. 

Yet, the same regime has barred these communities from employment in the army, public institutions, and key professions for decades.

Such actions are designed purely for external consumption — to deceive foreign media, diplomats, and human-rights forums. 

The regime invests heavily in polishing its image abroad while tightening repression at home.

The “Mary Metro” project reportedly dates back to 2015 — just two years before the government shut down the Assemblies of God Church in Tehran, the country’s largest Persian-language congregation. 

Even then, the regime pursued two simultaneous projects: real persecution and symbolic beautification.

Since then, arrests, church closures, killings of Christian leaders, and systemic exclusion have persisted.

The authorities will no doubt use this new metro station for propaganda — as a showpiece at international conferences, or even as a pretext for Western immigration officers to question persecuted converts: “How can you claim persecution when Iran has a Virgin Mary Metro?”

Yet the reality remains unchanged: institutional discrimination, organised repression, and the slow erasure of religious minorities from Iran’s social fabric.

Still, irony has its power. This very project may lead some Iranians to wonder who Mary and Jesus truly were — and in the digital age, curiosity can be the seed of truth.

It also shows that the Iranian state continues to care a lot about public opinion, especially outside the country — a fact that may perhaps be used as a tool to help curb discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities. 

For many Christians who have endured decades of persecution, exclusion, and discrimination, there is another bitter irony: on the walls of this metro, they can read how Christ came to deliver us from “darkness … and discrimination”, while the authorities who put up the sign continue to prevent the outworking of such liberation every single day.

Fred Petrossian is a Brussels-based Iranian-Armenian journalist and researcher.