Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026.MAHSA/AFP/Getty

In Iran, millions of protesters have taken to the streets to protest the repressive religious regime that has ruled the country for more than four decades. The response of the government, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been swift and brutal, with thousands of protesters reportedly killed. All over the world, onlookers are cheering the courage of the Iranian people who are risking their lives to fight for their freedom. In a video posted on X, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who led the country for 38 years until he was ousted by the current regime in 1979, vowed, “We will completely bring the Islamic Republic and its worn-out, fragile apparatus of repression to its knees.” In a Tuesday post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump encouraged the Iranian people to “KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!”

But for some Christians, the Iranian protests are more than just a popular uprising; they are the fulfillment of ancient Biblical prophecies that foretell the second coming of the Messiah. Last June, shortly after the United States bombed Iran, I wrote about the US evangelicals who were cheering that move:

Broadly speaking—though there are certainly exceptions—many of the most ardent supporters of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran identify as Christian Zionists, a group that believes that Israel and the Jewish people will play a key role in bringing about the second coming of the Messiah. As Christians, they are called to hasten this scenario, says Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy. “The mission, so to speak, is to get the Jews back to Israel and to establish themselves within Israel,” he says.........

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