Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, what representations they have recently made to the government of Iran regarding treatment of religious and ethnic minorities and access to places of worship for Persian-speaking Christians, following reports of the demolition of the Mashhad Evangelical Church.

The Government's position on Freedom of Religion or Belief in Iran is unchanged, as set out in the answer of 6 August 2025 to Question 67802, and it remains completely unacceptable for the Iranian authorities to target religious minority groups because of their faith.

At the UN Human Rights Council on 16 March, UK Human Rights Ambassador, Eleanor Sanders, stated that - while ethnic and religious minorities had faced consistent and severe repression since the Islamic Republic's inception - they had been acutely vulnerable during the recent US-Israel-Iran conflict. She urged the Iranian authorities not to exploit the conflict - as had been seen in the past - to inflict further violence on its people.