A spokesperson for the persecuted religious minority rejected the charge outright.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A dozen young members of the persecuted religious Baha’i minority have been arrested in Iran on charges of spying for Israel, Iranian news agency IRNA reported Saturday.

The report quoted the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security as saying that “the members of the organization communicated in secret, relying on the basis of messages sent from Haifa and the Zionist regime. These messages were used by the organization’s members in the country.”

The Baha’i governing body, the Universal House of Justice, is located in Haifa. Their founding prophet is buried in nearby Acre, and Baha’is around the world pray towards Israel.

The General Intelligence Department of Mazandaran Province, where the raids took place, said that two of those captured had “trained” at Haifa’s Baha’i facility and then entered Iran to form the espionage network.

The Baha’i International Center (BIC), which represents the religious group, rejected the spying claim outright, and contested the number of those arrested as well.

“Fourteen Baha’is, including 13 youths, were arrested yesterday in the northern Iranian city of Qaemshahr,” it said in a statement Thursday. “Most of the arrests occurred at a private home where the youth were studying and discussing together the role of education in social progress.”

This is the second time in a month that Iranian intelligence has claimed to have caught local Baha’is spying for Israel.

In the first incident, the exact number of those arrested was not revealed, but the same charge was reported – that they were working for the Haifa center and had illegally passed information on to it.

According to the Baha’i International Community, the Iranian government has cracked down especially hard on Baha’is since that time.

“Authorities have targeted Baha’is in 245 incidents of persecution over the past 32 days,” the statement continued. This has included “arrests and imprisonment, the destruction of homes and confiscation of properties, raids on private and business premises, beatings, the denial of medication to detainees and the denial of higher education to more than one hundred young people.”

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights condemned Iran in late August for its heavy-handed behavior against those professing a religion it has banned.

“We are deeply concerned with the increasing arbitrary arrests, and on occasions, enforced disappearances of members of the Baha’i faith and the destruction or confiscation of their properties, in what bears all the signs of a policy of systematic persecution,” it said, demanding the release of all those detained.

“The Iranian government’s cruelty breaks every measure,” said Simin Fahandej, representative of the BIC to the United Nations in Geneva. “Not only does it deprive these youth of entering universities and developing their intellectual capacities, it also denies them the simple right to gather as young people to discuss issues of importance to their generation.”

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Iranian Bahai members accused of being in contact with Israeli co-religionists.

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

Iran has rounded up tens of members of the Bahai religious sect, claiming that they were spying for Israel.

In a statement, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence announced on Monday the arrest of a number of Baha’is and accused them of contacts with the Bayt-al-Adl (House of Justice), the Baha’i administrative institution in Haifa, Israel.

The Iran International news portal reported that Fariba Kamalabadi, Mahvash Sabet (Shahriari) and Afif Naimi, three former directors of the Iranian Baha’i community known as “Yaran,” were among those who were arrested on Sunday in Tehran and Karaj.

The three had been detained before in 2018 and spent 10 years behind bars.

The Worldwide Baha’i Community said in a July 20 statement that Tehran had intensified its systematic campaign to suppress the religious minority in recent weeks, either arresting, summoning to court, putting on trial, or closing the businesses of at least 20 Baha’i citizens.

According to the community, in June, at least 44 Baha’is were detained, summoned to court, given prison sentences, or had their homes searched.

The Baha’i International Community stated on Monday that it is “outraged that a significant number of Bahais” were arrested “yet again” in Iran.

The arrests “reveal the Iranian government’s escalating persecution of Iran’s Baha’i community.”

The 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. The Iranian government claims that the Baháʼí faith is not a religion, but a political organization. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha’i faith a cult.

A Fatwa (Muslim decree) in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith. In 2019, the Iranian government made it impossible for the Baha’is to legally register with the Iranian state.

Baha’is, who number around 300,000 in Iran, say their rights are systematically violated and they are often harassed, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and deprived of government jobs and university education. The Iranian government has previously accused the Bahaʼis of being associated with Zionism

Baha’ism developed in Iran in the 19th century. Iranian leader Naser al-Din Shah Qajar banished Bahai leader Baháʼu’lláh from Iran to the Ottoman Empire and Baháʼu’lláh was later exiled by the Ottoman Sultan, at the behest of the Iranian Shah, to territories further away from Iran and finally to Acre, which later became a part of Israel.

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During Khamenei’s leadership, EIKO’s holdings of confiscated properties has topped $90 billion.

By Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon

The Iranian government is quietly ramping up the confiscation of private property owned by the country’s Baha’i faith community amid a “rising trend” of Iranian state-sanctioned land grabs and media propaganda campaigns targeting the religious minority, the Baha’i representative body warned on Wednesday.

Baha’i advocates said the Iranian government has been using court orders to seize the land in a “piecemeal fashion” in an attempt to “evade the notice of the international community.”

The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO), a state-affiliated group controlled by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seized six Baha’i properties in the province of Semnan, according to the Baha’i International Community (BIC).

The move follows similar seizures in recent months and comes as the Iranian government has demanded that the Biden administration drop all U.S. economic sanctions, including those related to human rights abuses, in exchange for Iran reentering a nuclear deal.

“The seizure by the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order of Baha’i properties is a novel and very worrying development for Iranian Baha’is,” said Diane Ala’i, representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva, in a statement. “This development demonstrates that the highest levels of Iran’s leadership are orchestrating the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran.”

EIKO has seized thousands of properties since the Iranian revolution, based on government claims that the ownership is illegitimate. During Khamenei’s leadership, EIKO’s holdings of confiscated properties has topped $90 billion, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation.

The seizure of a mix of residential and commercial properties in Semnan was approved by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on Jan. 30, the Baha’i International Community told the Washington Free Beacon. Iranian authorities “are attempting to justify confiscation on the basis that these are properties owned by Baha’i institutions,” which were outlawed in Iran in 1983, said BIC spokesman Saleem Vaillancourt.

“But the Baha’i community disbanded these institutions in 1983 to comply with the new law,” said Vaillancourt. “Today there are no Baha’i institutions in Iran; as a result, no properties can be said to be owned by institutions, only by individual Baha’is.”

The move follows similar appropriations of Baha’i land, according to the BIC.

Last month, a 24-year-old Baha’i woman reportedly had her apartment in Mazandaran province seized by authorities after she was arrested on undisclosed charges. In December, the government confiscated 13 irrigated farmlands from Baha’is during a draught and placed the properties up for auction at below-market rates. Local Baha’is “were told that the auction was closed to Baha’is, and also to any Muslims that had dealings with Baha’is,” according to the BIC.

“Iran’s leadership is enriching itself while impoverishing and displacing the Baha’is,” said Ala’i. “Seizures in Semnan, Mazandaran, and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces may be just the beginning … Supporters of human rights inside and outside Iran must condemn this outrageously unjust ruling and demand that it be rescinded without delay.”

An estimated 300,000 Baha’is live in Iran, according to BIC. The faith community, which believes in some tenets of Islam and Christianity and objects to violence, has faced government persecution for decades. In addition to the government’s ban on Baha’i institutions, the state-run media have portrayed the community as Satan worshippers and spies for the United States and Israel.

Iran has been demanding the withdrawal of U.S. sanctions, including those linked to human rights and terrorism, as it negotiates with the Biden administration over reentering the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Vaillancourt told the Free Beacon that the Baha’i community hopes U.S. and world leaders will press Iran to stop the property grabs.

“We hope that officials at international organizations and in the international community will now call on Iran to halt this latest seizure and reverse the others,” Vaillancourt told the Free Beacon.

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