Behnam Vali Heydarian, or “Ben Vali,” has lived what he feels like have been several lifetimes across four countries.
Raised as a Muslim in Kuwait, he became a devout follower of Islam before converting to Christianity in Iran, becoming a Christian pastor in Georgia, and eventually, an unrecognized refugee in Switzerland, where his spiritual journey has led him toward Judaism.
Heydarian spoke extensively with The Jerusalem Post, detailing Iran’s campaign of transnational repression, multiple attempts on his life, and the devastating consequences he could face if deported from Switzerland to Georgia and, ultimately, back to Iran.
He also discussed his pro-Israel activism. In this regard, Heydarian said he has been ostracized by the humanitarian community to which he once dedicated his life, solely because he supported the Jewish state and its people.
Heydarian was born in Kuwait in 1981 to two Iranian parents who were forced to return to Iran when the Gulf War broke out, finding himself in a country suffocated by radical Islam.
His early years in Kuwait left him fluent in Arabic, a skill that ultimately led to his selection at just 14 to compete in a Quran recitation competition. He questioned nothing and was content in Tehran.
It was not until he was 17 that he began to understand the regime’s brutality, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps raided the University of Tehran in response to protests over the closure of a reformist newspaper. While the regime acknowledged the deaths of only two people, rights groups estimated that as many as 17 were killed and dozens disappeared.
Like many, Heydarian participated in demonstrations against the brutality. But he did not truly divorce himself from the illusion of safety until he was 19, when men believed to be members of Iran’s security forces abducted his father.
“A lot in my life changed. It was a tornado,” he said, describing how men in an unmarked car took his father, who was never seen again.
With his father gone, Heydarian had to become his family’s provider. The time he had to dedicate to work left him with little capacity to pray, though he remained a devout Muslim.
“I was busier, so I practiced less. That kind of dragged me away from being a radical jihadi,” he noted.
A hunger for God
His business pulled him away from practicing Islam; it also took a significant toll on his health. At 29, Heydarian suffered a heart attack. His neighbor, with whom he had developed a close bond, had a dream that Heydarian’s home was on fire and entered the house just in time to find him collapsed on the floor.
Paramedics were filling out the forms to have the morgue collect his body when Heydarian came to. While technically dead, Heydarian shared with the Post that he had a vision of himself being dragged into a dark pit.
“I was dragged into it, and I was going down. It was really scary. I was dragged into something dark, a pit, and then suddenly everything stopped,” he recounted. “I was somewhere, nowhere, which was totally dark. And then my life started to appear, like 35-millimeter film frames.
“I was living there again, but everything was different. I lived all 29 years of my life over. Everybody I had met in this world, I saw again over there, and I begged almost everybody, ‘Please help me go from that world to this world.’ Nobody was able to do it,” Heydarian said.
“Finally, I met my mom. We talked a lot. Suddenly, I felt fire, flames of fire, on my body. I opened my eyes, and there was my neighbor and two ambulance technicians who had come to give me CPR.”
Heydarian believed at the time that he was in Barzakh, an Islamic concept describing an intermediate realm where souls wait after death for a final day of judgment.
When he became a Christian, he interpreted the experience as Hell, but now he thinks it may have been the Bosom of Abraham, a biblical phrase describing a place of comfort with the patriarch Abraham for righteous souls.
The brush with death profoundly changed Heydarian. He renewed his devotion to God and searched for his mission in life. Describing an intense “hunger” to know God, he explained how he returned to the religious texts he had once won competitions reciting, only to find that they pointed in the “opposite direction” from what he was seeking.
Praying to God for guidance, he stumbled upon two New Testament verses online: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).
Deeply impacted by these verses, Heydarian said he decided to read the whole New Testament. “When I finished, I said, ‘That’s it. That’s exactly the character of this God. He is exactly the God I have been thirsting for.’ So I started believing in Him, and I would say I gave my heart to the Lord at that time.”
When Heydarian approached his friends about his newfound beliefs, he discovered that they had all already converted but were scared of speaking to him given how devoutly he had followed Islam.
Relieved to have found acceptance, he spent years attending secret home churches and distributing copies of the New Testament across Iran, an offense for which Iranian authorities have imprisoned Christian converts and, in some cases, imposed severe sentences.
Barring a few close encounters with the regime’s security forces, Heydarian practiced his new faith in relative peace for two years, until he learned that a friend, Hamid, had been shot and killed by police while driving to meet him.
“Seven bullets were fired into his car. Three hit his body, and four hit the car. Later, we tried to find out what had happened … There was a camera nearby, and when they reviewed the footage, they saw that the police had shot him,” Heydarian said. “They made sure he was dead and then left. His family tried to file a complaint and find out what had happened, but the process was blocked. That’s what usually happens in Iran.”
A year later, in 2017, another of Heydarian’s friends was arrested. Heydarian feared that his friend would not remain silent under torture, so he decided to flee. Heading to the Turkish border, Heydarian initially planned to make his way to Ecuador. But he later abandoned that plan, took the first bus out of the area, and eventually found himself in Georgia.
Within days of arriving in Georgia, the generosity of a young Polish volunteer who spoke English helped Heydarian find both a place to live and work at a hostel.
He applied for asylum, but his application was promptly rejected, setting off a years-long legal battle. It was not until his sixth hearing in 2021 that the courts finally conceded he needed to remain in the country.
Though technically safe, Heydarian soon discovered that his activism came with a cost. When he began volunteering to help Iranians and speaking out against the violence accompanying the suppression of the 2019 protests, he learned that Iranian oppression did not stop at the Turkish border.
“After the uprisings in Iran, I couldn’t ignore the reality, the truth, and the voiceless people who were suffering there,” he said.
Reaching out to other politically active friends, they decided they should be doing more. Through his connections with major international aid organizations, including UNHCR – the UN Refugee Agency, World Vision International, and several European groups, Heydarian thereby became increasingly politically active.
Eventually, he wrote to multiple ambassadors in Georgia, urging them to take action on behalf of the Iranian people.
The letter, he said, “backfired.”
A Moroccan acquaintance subsequently tried to stab him. Authorities characterized the attack as stemming from a nonexistent love triangle, Heydarian said, rather than recognizing what he believed was political motivation.
In the years that followed, Heydarian said, he was repeatedly followed, assaulted, and his car vandalized. Each time, he said, authorities promised to investigate but never followed through. On several occasions, documents were stolen while valuables were left untouched.
People told Heydarian that the Iranian embassy had been asking questions about him. His church received suspicious visitors, and on one occasion, armed men attempted to enter his apartment.
In another incident, he said, he was returning from a swim when four men blocked his path to the bus station.
“They were talking on the phone. One of them was confirming my identity. I heard them speaking in Russian. One of them said, ‘Oh, it’s him, it’s him,’ and the guy on the phone asked, ‘Is it him?’ The person on the other end said, ‘Yeah, it’s him, it’s him.’ Then they came toward me and started beating me,” Heydarian said.
He described faking unconsciousness in order to escape, ultimately losing several teeth in the attack. Heydarian said he then ran to a police station, where officers turned him away and told him to return to the scene and call for help.
The Georgian Interior Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Allies turn enemies after October 7
After October 7, Heydarian said, another part of his life began to unravel.
He received harsh and sometimes abusive messages from fellow humanitarian workers angered by his support for Israel after the Hamas massacre. People he had once considered allies, he said, quickly turned their backs on him.
“I was kind of banned or kicked out from the whole environment of human rights in Europe,” he said.
Heydarian showed the Post an admonishing letter he received from one organization he worked for because he had posted a clip from the Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet.
Outside the deliberate hostility, the UN had also allowed Iran to deliver food packages to refugees in Georgia, including Iranian asylum seekers fleeing from the regime.
Showing the Post a letter penned by the Islamic Republic’s embassy, Heydarian said the comments about being stuck in a foreign land with no family were designed to torment him. He has not been able to see or speak to his mother for years.
The Hamas attack reminded Heydarian of the violence he had witnessed in Iran. Alongside his longstanding search for God, he said that recognition drew him toward the Jewish community.
Mikheil Grishashvili, a Jewish community leader and representative of the Peace Synagogue in Georgia, confirmed to the Post that Heydarian has been an active member of the community since 2023.
“He was an active, hardworking, kind, and responsible person, and he very quickly became part of our community,” Grishashvili said, adding that Heydarian became increasingly involved in Judaism.
But as his relationship with the Jewish community deepened, Heydarian said pressure from the Georgian authorities also intensified.
He said his bank accounts were repeatedly frozen and that his refugee status was threatened after he failed to register as a foreign agent in connection with his humanitarian work and a company he had established. He also claimed that, despite the EU and US continuing to fund organizations for which he worked, he personally faced increasing financial and legal pressure.
Ibrahim Alvac, the representative of a Swiss lawyers’ bureau representing Heydarian, told the Post, “Heydarian’s public position towards Israel and his engagement with Judaism are relevant elements of his personal and political profile.”
Referencing Heydarian’s current immigration process to Switzerland, Alvac went on to say that “these activities predate the current stage of his Swiss immigration proceedings and are [well] documented.”
“These circumstances are relevant to his overall profile because they are publicly documented and could therefore potentially become known to Iranian authorities. Whether and to what extent they increase the risk he would face in the event of a return to Iran is ultimately a matter requiring an individual assessment,” the Swiss lawyer added.
The pressure on Heydarian intensified when an individual whom he believes was connected to the Georgian security services confronted him.
According to Heydarian, the man warned him to stop his political activism or risk losing his temporary refugee status.
“He was very friendly at first, as they usually are, but there were very meaningful words and sentences: ‘Do this, don’t do this. Be aware of this. Be aware of that.’ In other words, he was framing the situation. He was essentially dictating what I should,” Heydarian said.
“In 2023, I was intimidated by the same guy. He told me that if I didn’t do certain things, my status would be revoked, which is what’s happening. He wanted me to stop every type of demonstration, not have demonstrations in front of the Iranian embassy or in front of the parliament.”
Rather than wait to see whether the threat would materialize, Heydarian traveled to Switzerland for a convention. While there, he applied for asylum, but he said his application was rejected.
“I came here on a business visa, but they wrote that I had arrived in Switzerland illegally. Then they said Georgia was a safe country, regardless of the documents I provided,” he detailed.
He went on to describe what he called the severe emotional toll the constant threats and fear have taken on him.
Without legal status and fearing for his life, Heydarian is now living in hiding while appealing Switzerland’s decision to reject his asylum application.
He said people have written directly to Switzerland’s Interior Ministry offering him employment and housing, but he never received a response. He has also written to the UN Committee against Torture, but says he was told that his case was not relevant because he was not currently being tortured.
After years of escaping persecution, Heydarian now finds himself in a different kind of limbo: unable to return to Georgia, terrified of being sent back to Iran, and without a country willing to offer him a permanent place of refuge.
Despite spending years defending the rights of others, he fears there may be no one left to defend him until it is already too late. Yet, as he continues his journey toward Judaism, Heydarian says he has faith that he will be shown the way to wherever he is destined to fulfill his purpose.
