Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, chairman of the Judiciary, issued the postponement order, saying its purpose was to give Nadarkhani time in which to recant his Christianity and become a Muslim.
However, many analysts suspect the main purpose is to avoid an execution that would inflame passions in the Christian world against Iran.
The regime has also put on hold the planned execution of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to die for adultery. After her case became an international cause celebre, the regime accused her of murdering her husband and insisted her death sentence was for that crime, not adultery, even though she wasn’t accused of murder until after being sentenced to death.
Pastor Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 in his home city of Rasht and accused of apostasy. Nadarkhani said he had never been a Muslim since becoming an adult and thus had never “left” Islam, the requirement for apostasy. But prosecutors said the apostasy law still applied because he was of “Islamic ancestry.”
The regime appears to be putting both the Ashtiani and Nadarkhani cases on the back burner so as not to arouse more critics abroad with executions of an adulterer and a Christian. Some think they will be executed when the regime surmises they have been forgotten. Others think they are now effectively condemned to life imprisonment.
