Between October 13^th and 16^th there were 470 serious road accidents which left 135 dead and 625 injured according to the Tehran Times. Most of the accidents were due to speeding and taking corners badly, especially on the winding roads from Tehran up to the Northern provinces. After heart disease, road accidents are the second major cause of death in Iran, with victims usually killed by head injuries. Nearly every family has a relative whose life has been tragically been cut short as they have simply got into a car or a bus. Another sad aspect of this is that since many drivers are healthy men, families lose their main bread-winner. For Christians these stark figures are a good reminder to work, while it is still day.

Pray for

• Christians to be source of comfort to grieving relatives
• Churches to teach on the importance of road safety
• Government to take radical action to cut road deaths

With women retiring at 55 and men at 60 with 1/35 of their final salary multiplied by the number of years they have worked, Iran’s pension system is better than many other countries. There is one problem – inflation. At present it is running at about 25% and with oil prices falling, demand for exports rising, and those possible sanctions on the horizon, there is no sign of improvement. This puts a lot of pressure on pensioners, especially as it is food prices in particular that have risen. One newspaper– Etemad – reports that lower income families have had to spend twice as much this year as last to put basic meals on the table. It would be the same for pensioners. Thankfully Iranian families put great emphasis on looking after their old, but still, the issue of pensions and inflations is not a happy one.

Pray for

• Pensioners with financial difficulty to discover their heavenly father’s provision
• For the church to be sensitive to the needs of the old
• Wisdom in government to keep inflation under control

Unemployment in Iran is officially running at about 12.5% which is comparable to other countries in the Middle East, and better than Europe’s Spain which is suffering about 17.5% unemployment these days. Examine the Iran figures a little closer and there is some good news: the unemployment rate is less than 5% for the over thirties. This means the bad news is if you are under thirty. Here some reports say that of the several million jobless, about three quarters are the young.

They are the worse hit. This means that young adults have to remain living at home, and most difficult of all, it means marriage has to be postponed. Very sensibly in the Iranian culture a man must prove to his future in laws that he can support his wife, if he can not, then there are problems.

Pray for

• Young people with time on their hands to find out about Christ
• For the church to use the time of members without work
• The government to be given wisdom to create more jobs

Petrol is a stressful subject for many Iranians. Pampered for many years with subsidized petrol, in 2007 the government upset drivers by putting the price up from about eight US cents a litre, to ten. Then the rationing came – 3.5. litres per day for private cars – and they became furious. Indeed there were riots in Tehran. The anger not only reflects the fragile state of many family incomes, knocked off budget by this seemingly small rise, but also a deeper frustration. Their country has some of the richest gas and oil deposits in the world, and yet Iranians have to queue at the pump for petrol which might well have been imported from China or Venezuela. The reason is very practical, Iran does not have enough refineries, but that does not take away the painful contradiction of oil rich Iranians facing petrol rationing. Getting around is vital for all church work, so the subject is important for Christians.

Pray for

• Wisdom for policy makers to maintain supply of petrol
• Successful building of more refineries
• Christians who have to travel many miles by road to have their petrol needs met

Anecdotes, websites, carefully researched film documentaries which win awards at international festivals all point to a major rise in prostitution, especially in Tehran where runaway girls tend to end up. One website says the city hosts about 250 brothels and earlier the newspaper ‘Entekhab’ threw out the figure of 85,000 girls on the street. Nobody of course knows, but the oldest profession has clearly been expanding, and tragically many of the girls are just teenagers. Some of this prostitution operates under the guise of ‘sighe’, temporary marriage allowed by Shia Islam, where the couple can ‘marry’ either for a couple of hours, or much longer. This increase in prostitution points not only to economic hardship, but also a deeper sort of breakdown for many. As has already happened, Jesus Christ has sent his servants to some of these wounded women, and they have experienced new life.

Pray for

• More Christians to share the Gospel with young vulnerable women
• The ‘Sighe’ system to be outlawed
• For men whipped by lust followed by guilt to find Christ

The Supreme Leader has asked for a review of the human sciences curriculum (subjects such as Economics, Psychology, and Sociology). He believes that much of their content is based on a Western materialistic world view and so could encourage ‘doubt and disbelief in Islamic principles.’ His request is a reminder that the government, especially in the aftermath of the disputed election, wants to keep a firm hand on the universities. Christians would agree partially with Ayatollah Khamenei. They too would not want Iran’s thousands of students to take on a materialistic world view which denies the creation of man in God’s image. Atheism only causes chaos and cruelty as the history of communism shows. However Christians would also know that forcing religious principles on young people has no lasting impact. A truly lasting experience of God happens only when the living Christ enters someone’s heart. It is important that Christians pray for this to happen across Iran’s many institutes of higher education as students return this summer to their courses, many of them bitterly disillusioned with what has been happening in their country in the name of religion.

Pray for

• Iran’s thousands of students to hear the Gospel
• For a vital faith in the living God to sweep across Iran’s universities
• That disillusionment does not decay into atheism

When Mohsen Rouhalamini died in prison two weeks after being detained on July 9^th, the prison authorities said the cause of death was meningitis. However on August 31^st Iran’s Forensic Medicine Organization told the Mehr News Agency that it was not meningitis, but ‘physical stress’ cause by ‘multiple beatings’. This disclosure has shocked the political establishment and alarmed the whole country. The shock is because Rouhalamini was the son of a senior advisor to Mohsen Rezai, a 2005 presidential candidate, ex-military commander and still a leading political figure. The Supreme Leader has ordered an investigation into the incident and promised to make unruly prison staff accountable to justice. If this does not happen Iranian society will remain stressed with this question: if prison staff can feel free to apply ‘multiple beatings’ to the son of a senior conservative, what will they do with others?

Pray for:

• Comfort for the Rouhalamini family as they grieve
• Success of the inquiry so the killers are brought to justice
• Commitment from the government to make prison staff accountable

While three women are due to be in President Ahmadinejad’s new cabinet, a 57 year old teacher, Alieh Eghdamdoust is in Evin prison for peacefully demonstrating for equal legal rights with men. As well as their testimony being worth half that of a man’s in a court, women also face discrimination in laws that deal with marriage, divorce, and child custody. As Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel prize-winner, has shown, Iranian women do not lack courage. When asked by the judge why she was at the demonstration, Ms Eghdamdous responded with, “Why didn’t you defend your daughters and wife’s rights by attending the legal peaceful gathering?”

Other women activists are also being intimidated.Zeynab Bayzeydi has been sentenced to four years imprisonment and Ronak Safarzadeh to six years. Though the situation for women in Iran is much better than some other Middle Eastern countries, especially Saudi Arabia, nevertheless this discrimination is still a source of great stress, now made much worse by the fact the government is taking such stern action against those peacefully campaigning for change.

Pray for:

• Alieh Eghdamdoust to experience God’s mercy in prison
• Shirin Ebadi and others to have the courage to speak out for justice
• Women feeling discriminated against to hear about the Man who honoured their worth.

In millions of homes the daily torture is not politics: it is drugs. This remains the number on scar on the heart of the nation. Most addicts use opium or heroin, which flows over the borders from Afghanistan. However, experts have noticed some worrying changes. One is the increased usage of the heroin variants, ‘crystal’ and ‘crack’ whose intensity has caused a number of fatal overdoses; and the other is that toads are now on the drug menu. Dr Mokri says that addicts are now breeding toads to kill and then use their dried skins in cigarettes. When smoked the skin releases poisonous chemicals which deliver hallucinations.

Nobody yet knows what the impact of this toad abuse will be. Though Iran spends billions of dollars on combating drugs, it remains, according to the UN, the country with the highest opiate abuse in the world. For the estimated four million families ravaged by the effects of addiction, while some have been set free through the Gospel, there is a crying need for more Christian agencies with a proven record of success to minister to Iran’s addicts, including those who have got high on toads.

Pray for:

• Churches presently ministering to addicts
• New agencies to be raised up to treat the curse of addiction
• Comfort and strength for families torn apart by addicts.

A constant strain for Iranian society is the uncertainty of people’s legal rights if they get caught up in the revolutionary judiciary system. It is common knowledge that normal procedures are not always followed. This Monday a senior reformist politician, Mehdi Karroubi, has turned this strain into fierce anger. In a public letter to Hashem Rafsanjani he claims that both women and young men among the hundreds arrested for protesting against the disputed election have been ‘savagely’ raped. Unexpectedly the government has not dismissed these accusations, but instead has admitted that Kahrizak prison, in the south of the Terhan area, has not maintained ‘standards’. And the head of Kahrizak prison has not just been sacked, but has been jailed himself. For all Iranians, and especially Christians who are sometimes unfairly incarcerated (see article about Maryam Rustampoor and Marzieh Amirizadeh), it is crucial that the country has a judicial and prison system that is humane and accountable.

Pray for:

• All those guilty of abusing prisoners to be brought to justice
• For Iran’s judicial and prison system to be humane
• For all those working in the courts and prisons, to be lovers of justice and mercy.