When Iran launched attacks across multiple Gulf nations, the immediate impact on Christian communities was swift and severe. Places of worship were shut down during the first week. Bible Society bookstores saw minimal customer traffic. Churches that had been gathering weekly fell silent. Yet in the middle of all of this, Bible Society teams kept going.

Staff and volunteers in Bahrain launched a Healing Group on Zoom, creating a digital space for people to process fear, grief, and uncertainty together through Scripture. In Kuwait, Yousef held a Bible Society seminar for the Telugu-speaking community — migrant workers far from home, now caught in a conflict they never asked for. In the UAE, Bible Society staff visited labour camps to pray with workers who had no one else to turn to.

"These are people who are often invisible," one team member noted. "The conflict has made their situation even more precarious. But they still want to hear from God."

Bible Society's work in the Gulf has always operated in a complex environment — but the current escalation has brought a new urgency. The organisation is asking supporters in the UK to pray for their teams, for the safety of Christians in the region, and for those encountering the Bible for the first time in the middle of crisis.

For a region where open Christian witness has always required courage, the response of Bible Society's partners has been quietly extraordinary. In the face of bombs and closed borders, the work of sharing Scripture continues.