A podcast by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has championed the suspended refugee programme created nearly 40 years ago to provide a pathway to the United States for persecuted religious refugees, including from Iran.

‘A Lifeline for Iran’s Persecuted Religious Minorities’ explains how the Lautenberg-Specter Program was initially set up in 1989 to aid the resettlement of refugees from the former Soviet states, but was amended in 2004 to also include Iranians.

The episode is hosted by the USCIRF chair, Vicki Hartzler, and features Mark Hetfield, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which has facilitated the resettlement of over 30,000 Iranians through the programme.

Hartzler hails Lautenberg-Specter as “a vital initiative” and “critical lifeline”, which “for decades … has provided a pathway for thousands of individuals fleeing religious persecution … including Christians, Jews and Bahais”. 

Unlike many other refugee pathways, Hetfield explains, Lautenberg-Specter enables refugees to begin their application from the country in which they are being persecuted. Then, once accepted, the refugee travels to a third country, which serves as a “transit point” for them to be processed, and “issues a visa at the request of the US government”. Once they have been vetted, they are then resettled through a sponsor in the United States.

Hetfield said that while the US did not want to “assist” the Islamic Republic with the “cleansing” of religious minority populations, the programme had allowed persecuted members of these minorities, “until now, to understand that if they really could not remain in Iran, they had an escape route. They had a way out”. 

“And for better, for worse,” he added, “this gave many of them kind of the comfort that if things really became intolerable in Iran, they would be able to leave. That’s really what made this programme, I think, so important and impactful. And of course, tens of thousands of Iranian religious minorities have taken advantage of it.” 

Yet while Iran still has the largest Baha’i population in the Middle East, the second largest Jewish community and an estimated 800,000 Christians, Hetfield said that due to the suspension on refugee resettlement to the US since January 2025, he was “worried now that this safety valve has been shut off, and the message that that sends to Iranian religious minorities at their most vulnerable moment”.

There are almost 15,000 Iranian refugees currently awaiting resettlement, according to Hetfield, but “we just can’t add to that number unless and until Congress extends the amendment”.

Of the 15,000, Hetfield said that as well as 800 Jews and “a couple of thousand” Baha’is, “the vast majority are Christians – primarily Armenian and Assyrian Christians”. 

He added that while the current suspension on refugee resettlement “isn’t specific to Iranians”, “it’s certainly impacting them”.

USCIRF has consistently called for the Lautenberg-Specter Programme to be “permanently reauthorised” by the US Congress because at the moment it must be renewed every 12 months, but Hetfield noted that while the reauthorisation would allow people to apply again, “it wouldn’t actually require [the government to authorise] their admission into the United States”.

You can listen to the episode in full here.