When Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq’s Christians had good reason to be afraid. Although they were not implicated in the political fall-out which followed, they quickly began to realise that, were the security situation to remain destabilised, it could have fatal consequences for the survival of one of the world’s oldest churches.
All the more so when, a few days later, Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against US targets, including attacks on an airbase in Erbil, the capital of semi-autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq.
