Assyrian Church priest: Iran’s ethnic, religious communities enjoy equal rights

Daryavoush Azizian, a prominent priest of the Eastern Assyrian Church in Urmia

Urmia, IRNA – Iran’s ethnic and religious communities live freely and enjoy equal citizenship rights, rejecting foreign media attempts to sow division and portray a false image of the Islamic Republic, says a prominent priest of the Eastern Assyrian Church in Urmia.

Daryavoush Azizian made the remarks during the sixth episode of the “Revayat-e Nasr” program produced by IRNA’s West Azarbaijan bureau.

“With all the attempts made to create division among Iranian ethnic groups, the Iranian nation, with different viewpoints, has formed a rainbow of ethnicities and religions and has lived alongside one another with unity and empathy,” Azizian said.

“In our beloved Iran, no ethnicity or religion has superiority over another in terms of citizenship rights,” he added.

Azizian described Iran as a vast country with diverse ethnicities, religions, and dialects, saying the coexistence of such communities can be especially “seen and felt” in Urmia.

“The enemy has always tried to create division among the Iranian nation,” he said. “Even in Urmia, they repeatedly fueled such issues, but their efforts and deception always produced the opposite result, and our people became more united.”

Referring to Iraq’s war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s, he said people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds stood together against the enemy.

“I believe that as long as Iranians remain united, no power can harm them or our beloved country, Iran,” he said.

Azizian also recalled visits by the Martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, to the families of fallen Christian soldiers, describing them as among his “most beautiful memories.”

“The visits of our martyred Leader to the homes of Christian martyrs astonished people around the world and remain a lasting memory for us,” he said. “These meetings were a major event for us because he was the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, and that was deeply valuable to us.”

He said senior officials regularly visit Assyrian and Armenian martyrs’ families, but stressed that “for the Leader of a country to visit the home of a Christian martyr was, in fact, a great sign of respect for the status of followers of divine religions and different ethnic groups in the country.”

Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated by US-Israeli airstrikes that targeted his residence on February 28, initiating a war that lasted 40 days, at the end of which Washington and Tel Aviv were compelled by the relentless Iranian retaliatory airstrikes to ask for a ceasefire.