For years, the Iranian regime held back from seizing Tehran’s St. Peter Evangelical Church, the oldest Protestant church in Iran. The regime was afraid of what America might do in retaliation, according to three Western Christian leaders with ties to Tehran’s Christian community as well as Sargez Benyamin, executive secretary of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Iran in Diaspora and former pastor of St. Peter. That fear, these sources say, is now gone, with Iranian officials recently threatening the church’s leaders.

“I will tell you the literal words they used,” Sasan Tavassoli, an Iranian Presbyterian pastor in the U.S. with direct contacts at St. Peter, told The Free Press. “We were concerned about America all these years. America came. They slapped us on the face. We slapped them on the face back. And then America withdrew. So we are no longer afraid of America.”

Last week, the regime told the 20 families living at St. Peter that they have just weeks to vacate. Most of the families are low-income and have lived at the compound for years, Benyamin said.

The Iranian regime said it is seizing the property through EIKO—the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, a state-affiliated organization—and issuing a new deed in its own name through the Islamic Revolutionary Court, according to a letter written by Benyamin that was addressed to the international Christian community.