Iran is understandably the number one news story, with primary focus on the progress of U.S. military and diplomatic engagement and the responses of the Shia Mullah regime in Tehran. Almost no one is thinking or talking about the equally important spiritual and cultural ramifications for Iran, and the region, if the United States prevails—driving the current regime in Iran out of power. There’s even less analysis of the shifting geopolitics resulting from the combined effects of successful U.S. operations restoring control of the Panama Canal, Venezuela and its resources, the collapse of Cuba, and the degradation of narco-terrorism—all in the Western Hemisphere, and the fall of the current Iranian regime—in the heart of the Middle East.
Christianity has ancient roots in Iran, which was known as Persia, dating all the way back to the 1st century A.D., making it one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Acts 2 recounts that at the time of the Pentecost when Jewish people from all parts of the diaspora were gathered in Jerusalem, they heard people speaking in many tongues, including the Parthian, Medes, and Elamites—three separate groups that came from what is now in the territory of Iran.
After Pentecost, two of Jesus’ Apostles, Saint Thaddeus and Saint Bartholomew, traveled east to evangelize in what is now Iran, Iraq, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Armenia, which now borders north Iran, would become the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity as its official state religion in 301 A.D.
The original Monastery of Saint Thaddeus was established in northern Iran in A.D. 66–68, after Thaddeus became a martyr, making it one of the oldest church-monasteries in the world. Because Saint Thaddeus is credited with bringing Christianity to Armenia in the 1st century, the Monastery in his name, located in Iran, has served as a major pilgrimage destination for Armenian Christians for some 19 centuries.
The Christian population in Iran today is growing at about 20 percent each year—faster than in any other country in the world. This high growth is confirmed by missionary research organizations such as Operation World, Elam Ministries, and Transform Iran, which all report Iran as having Christian conversion growth rates of about 20 percent per year.
This high annual growth rate of Christians in Iran is attributable to underground evangelical home churches (mostly Muslim-background converts), rather than the formal small ethnic Armenian and Assyrian Christian churches. Recent estimates of the number of Christians in Iran now vary from 1-2 million (and even up to 3 million in higher estimates).
There are two other factors behind the high growth rates happening in Iranian home churches: 1) The penetration of satellite and internet technology in educating and evangelizing, and 2) The widespread disillusionment with the Islamic Republic and Shia Islam. Decades of theocracy have been accompanied by economic hardship, corruption, oppression, bloodshed, and cultural isolation.
Credible independent surveys, like one published in 2025 that was conducted by the Dutch organization known as GAMMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran), have found that Iranian popular support for “the principles of the Islamic revolution and the Supreme Leader”—which are core to the regime’s ideological foundation—is just 11 percent.
When we combine the political and cultural facts and trends that the Iranian people are overwhelmingly opposed to the Shia clerical regime and the Islamic Republic, with a sustained annual 20 percent growth rate of the Christian population in Iran, there has been a substantive reason to expect major changes in Iran even before the current war.
The total military defeat of Iran in the Middle East combined with what the U.S. has accomplished in the Western hemisphere—wresting control of Panama and its canal from China, taking on the Latin American narco-terrorists, and cutting China off from Venezuelan oil will deliver a multifaceted strategic and economic blow to China and the CCP—shifting the geopolitical tectonic plates in favor of the United States and the cause of freedom.
This outcome stems primarily from China’s documented dependence on Iran and Venezuela for oil, its infrastructure stakes in Panama, and its ties in the Western Hemisphere drug trade. China is the world’s largest crude oil importer (at 11.6 million barrels per day) by more than a factor of two over India—the next largest importer of oil (at 4.8 million barrels per day), while the U.S. is now a net exporter of oil. Previously, China purchased more than 50 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports, which have been cut off following the U.S. ouster of President Nicolás Maduro. China imports 80-90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, which funds Iran’s military budget—a budget that will be radically curtailed with a U.S. victory in Iran. All of this gives the U.S. leverage in the global markets China depends on.
Additionally, both Venezuela and Iran have significant debts to China because of multi-billion-dollar project investments structured with Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) debt. Venezuela now has a pro-U.S. government in place that could repudiate BRI loans of $10-20 billion under legal categorization of being “odious debt.” Should Iran end up with a pro-U.S. regime with the defeat of the Mullahs, Iran could repudiate some $400 billion in BRI investments for oil and gas petrochemical infrastructure.
Strategically, Venezuela, Panama, and Iran have represented three key nodes in China’s anti-US. alignment:
1) Panama as a crown jewel of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to promote and prioritize Chinese infrastructure, trade, and transit interests. 2) Venezuela as a Latin American beachhead with domestic narco-terrorist groups, such as Cartel de los Soles—formerly headed by Maduro, and Cuban and Iranian security forces, and terrorist groups—notably Hezbollah; and 3) Iran as a Middle East bridge—a BRI land-sea connector—and the world’s largest sponsor of anti-American terrorism.
Trump’s shrewd and precise targeting in Venezuela and shockingly powerful and persistent kinetic attacks in Iran effectively collapsed this three-fold strategic partnership and the “infrastructure debt-for-resources” model of BRI. This has also weakened the BRICS cohesion and is forcing China into costlier and riskier energy deals. Trump’s trifecta, fraught with risk, has effectively put the United States on a path of greater dominance in these three theaters, while delivering clear strategic setbacks to our chief adversary, CCP-controlled China.
Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book, "Rediscovering America," was a #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org.