Why Baha'is are 'persecuted' in Iran?

...technically speaking, the Islamic Republic of Iran, while it does not constitutionally recognize or accord legitimacy to Bahaism as a creed, has no state sponsored policy of persecuting Bahaism either. Baha’is as Iranian citizens are legally accorded full citizenship rights under the law in Iran. It is their creed (together with its organization and activities) which is not recognized, or granted legal privileges, and not their rights as citizens per se. This fact is consistently misrepresented, confused or totally glossed over in silence in the West. Nevertheless, besides the fact that at all stages of its history Bahaism has been consistently sponsored and supported by the forces of Anglo-European imperialism and colonialism against the interests and security of Iran; the issues the Islamic Republic of Iran currently has with the activities of Bahaism have to do primarily with the reality that the Haifan Baha’i organization and its leadership have consistently enjoyed a tightly knit relationship with the state of Israel, its establishment and state apparatus. The Israeli establishment, quite literally, has gone out of its way to protect the Baha’is since 1948 and in turn the Baha’is themselves have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Zionist state. The reader is invited to Google pictures of their Baha’i World Centre in Haifa to see for themselves the kind of allowances the Israeli state has made to this organization in the construction of their megalomaniacal Hanging Gardens of Babylon on Mt Carmel. Independent Israeli filmmaker Naama Pyritz even confessed during her 2004 interview of Frederick Glaysher what she believed to be the Haifan Baha’i organization’s inordinately ‘special relationship’ with the Israeli state (as well as with the United States and Great Britain): a special relationship which no other community or organization in Israel presently enjoys.

As such, given the history here, together with the central, overriding fact that its very world headquarters is located in Israel, the activities of the Haifan Baha’i organization demonstrably pose a serious national security threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran in a similar fashion as various radical Islamist terrorist groups or violent irredentists (such as the Basque separatists and similar) would theoretically pose national security threats to Western governments and their internal national security interests. It should be noted as well that France banned Scientology and proscribes its activities by law, and to some extent Germany as well; and so, the situation of the Haifan Baha’i organization in Iran is legally similar to the situation of Scientology or, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses in France and Germany. In Germany, for instance, they are not even registered as a religious organization but as an NGO.

The Western media often likes to blow the Baha’i issue in Iran beyond all reasonable proportions while conveniently remaining silent or otherwise downplaying similar parallels existing in Western countries. Almost nothing is mentioned by them about Baha’isms sordid history or eyebrow raising linkages and connections presently. This is precisely because these Western establishments are engaging in carefully orchestrated neo-colonial perception management, consensus building and so information war against Iran due to the fact that the Haifan Baha’is have in fact been their dependable comprador lackeys and trojan horse in the region – and so, native informers — for the good part of one-hundred and sixty-six years.

- Wahid Azal

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/25/behind-the-politics-of-a-current-brouhaha-in-iran-an-ex-president-ayatollahs-daughter-and-the-bahais/