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A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldier turned Christian missionary says freedom from Iran’s Islamist regime is worth the economic costs Westerners might face.

Iranian missionary Mohamad Faridi has told Westerners that a free Iran is worth the cost of a few extra dollars in petrol.

Faridi, a Christian convert who left Islam in Iran and then had to flee for doing so, posted the video to Facebook, stating,

“How about worrying about ridding this world of this tyrannical (Islamist) regime, instead of fretting over fuel prices?”

“Freedom has a cost,” he added.

“Let freedom reign!”

Telling followers that he had not heard from his family, who are still in the country, he asserted that this was where our concerns should be.

Faridi also thanked Donald Trump, Israeli and American soldiers for giving “his people the best possible chance of liberation.”

From Jihad to Jesus

A missionary leader, Faridi, has been the president of Iran Christians International (ICI) since 2019.

The organisation’s main focus is evangelising Muslims, and “raising an army” of those who’ve chosen the risky road of leaving Islam.

Their website states that ICI “translates, prints and equips the underground church with sound doctrinal Christian literature and provides legal assistance to persecuted Christians.”

ICI’s main reason for being is to share the Gospel through advocacy, discipleship, and prayer.

Faridi is perfectly placed.

He was born in Tehran, was raised in the strict observance of Shi’ite Islam, and served in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Despite his mother being Persian, his family spoke Arabic, not Farsi.

According to a free e-book titled Forsaking My Father’s Religion, Faridi said he lived out every ritual and became “the most zealous of all his family.”

“I was prepared to become a martyr,” he wrote.

“The only certain way, according to the Quran, to achieve that is dying for Allah in the holy war, jihad.”

“I wanted to sacrifice my life willingly in jihad, and suffer a worthy death to gain Islam’s paradise,” Faridi said.

In actuality, “all he was truly seeking was forgiveness from his sins and a relationship with God.”

Ultimately, Faridi realised that his life under Islam “was driven by fear.”

“There was no personal relationship between God and me,” he explained.

Faridi said, there was “no warm affection in his heart, either from me to ‘Allah’ or from ‘Allah’ to me.”

“It was all actions done out of duty.”

He converted to Christianity at the age of 22, because “the message of what Jesus had done through His sacrifice had brought (Faridi) to (his) knees.”

Faridi recalled, “repenting and giving his life to Jesus Christ that very day.”

“I didn’t know him, but I trusted him, because he laid down his life for me,” he said.

Under Islam, Faridi testified, he found that he was constantly labouring to sacrifice for a god who was never satisfied.

Yet, in Jesus Christ, he met God labouring and sacrificing Himself for Faridi.

“Everything that I had worked for through rituals — peace, rest, and forgiveness of my sins — was already freely provided in Christ Jesus,” the ICI boss declared.

“I so wanted Him in my life, and to know Him more and more,” and that came with a price.

He was kicked out of home, then found himself learning from and leaning on the underground church.

Denounced one day for sharing the Gospel, he fled to Turkey only to find himself in no-man’s land, where he faced the constant possibility of deportation back to Iran.

Faridi said he eventually ended up in the United States, which, he said, upon reflection, was surreal.

A Door Opened for the Gospel

In a 3 March podcast posted to The Archive — a legacy channel for controversial apologist David Wood videos — Faridi seemed to view the Trump administration’s actions against Iran’s Islamists with anticipation.

“Iranians are done with Islam,” he explained.

“Out of the 75,000 mosques, 50,000 closed in 2023. In January this year, mosques were burning down, and protestors were destroying shrines and Islamic symbols.”

“The Persian people are done with the evil of Islam, and they’re already moved on from it,” Faridi claimed.

For instance, he said,

“The fastest-growing evangelical church is inside Iran. ICI are working with them.

“We have underground churches everywhere. Every little town, in cities, and villages, has underground churches in them.”

There is a revival happening in the country, Faridi shared, and it’s “going to be awesome.”

Many ex-Muslims are millennials, and their Islam-exit is being noticed all over.

So much so that the Iranian parliament was told by its Islamist president that “Christians were stealing Islamic soldiers out of the camp of Islam and taking them into the camp of Christianity.”

Appearing to be appreciative of the potential door for ministry opened up by Trump’s goal of denying Iran’s Islamists nuclear weapons, Faradi said he was “grateful forever to God.”

Keen and hopeful, Faradi concluded that he couldn’t wait “to go back to Iran and openly share the Gospel with all of the Iranians.”