A memorandum by Iran’s government issued on the instruction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the global eradication of the Bahá’í community, according to a May 26 report by the Geneva-based consultative body the Bahá’í International Community (BIC). BIC represents the worldwide Bahá’í community at the United Nations, and advises on issues of international concern.
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Bahá’ís have been systematically persecuted in Iran since the 1979 revolution, as the Islamic Republic views the Baha’i faith to be a heretical offshoot of Islam. The religion has more than five million followers spread across more than 190 countries.
The secret memorandum entitled “The Bahá’í Question,” which Kayhan Life has seen, was produced in 1991 by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council (ISRCC) after consultations with Khamenei, who became the Supreme Leader in 1989. It outlines ways to stop the Bahá’í community in Iran from practicing their faith and calls for a plan “to confront and destroy their cultural roots outside the country.”
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The document orders the government to restrict the Bahá’ís’ educational, cultural, legal and social status through measures which include expulsion from universities, denouncing their faith and denying them positions of influence in the country. The memorandum, which was signed by Khamenei, was first made public in 1993 by the UN.
“There are numerous memoranda but this is the blueprint, and we can see it playing out in the fate of the Bahá’í community in Iran,” Padideh Sabeti, the spokesperson for BIC on the persecution of the Bahá’ís told Kayhan Life in an interview. “Iran has never acknowledged it, or confessed or revoked this document.”
“It is important that policy makers and people involved in negotiations with Iran at the moment talk about this 1991 document and ask the Iranian government, as a gesture of goodwill, to revoke the memorandum,” Sabeti added. “We believe that human rights should be taking a more central role in talks, because if you want to have a meaningful dialogue with Iran you need to work on a sustainable relationship which is grounded in common values and ensuring Iran respects its own obligations, like its decision to sign up to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).”
The memorandum restricts the Bahá’ís’ educational, cultural, legal and social status through measures which include expulsion from universities, denouncing their faith and denying them positions of influence in the country.
“The ‘progress and development’ of the Bahá’í community was to be ‘blocked,’ the memorandum said, in a long-term effort to eradicate the Bahá’í community as a viable entity in the land where it began,” the BIC report noted. “Nor has the Iranian government ever revoked this policy.”
“When the Bahá’í faith emerged in 19th-century Iran, it introduced principles such as the equality of women and men, the harmony of science and religion, and the importance of education and service to society,” the report said. “Like many new religions throughout history, its appearance from within an established religious orthodoxy was met with suspicion and misunderstanding. Some within Iran’s religious leadership perceived the faith as a challenge to traditional authority and sought to curtail its influence.”
Bahá’ís in Iran are consistently oppressed by the government through the demolition of their cemeteries and homes, house raids, confiscations of their religious texts, routine arrests, unjust court rulings and the arbitrary detention of Bahá’í women and children. More than 200 Bahá’ís were executed during the first years of the revolution.
“The document is in breach of Bahá’ís’ citizen rights and it is also in violation of the ICCPR, of which Iran is a signatory,” Sabeti said. “These breaches involve violations of freedom of belief and religion, people’s civil rights. This document goes beyond harassing Bahá’ís. It is intended to restrict the lives of the Bahá’ís in all aspects of life, to the point that they are hoping to uproot and suppress the Bahá’í community.”
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The treatment of Bahá’ís in Iran has incited international condemnation. The European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s judiciary on April 16, over the government’s systematic persecution of Bahá’ís. The sanctions target judges and prisons including judges in the Shiraz Revolutionary Court, the Tehran and Shiraz Courts of Appeal, Shiraz Central Prison and the head of the Fars Prisons Protection and Intelligence Department.
“All these agencies and institutions have had significant roles, not only in sentencing Bahá’ís to years of arbitrary imprisonment, but also in ordering their execution in the early years of the revolution,” the press release for the sanctions said.
“The EU has joined the UN and other global institutions in unequivocally condemning the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran, in the form of restrictive measures against those committing the injustice against the Bahá’ís”, Rachel Bayani, the representative of BIC to the European Union said in the release.
The UN has repeatedly criticized the Islamic Republic for its treatment of the Bahá’í community.
“Bahá’í women were being targeted through arrests, summoning for interrogation, enforced disappearance, raids on homes, confiscation of personal belongings, limitations on freedom of movement and prolonged consecutive deprivations of liberty,” a December 2024 UN report said. “In the larger context of the targeting of women in Iran and the challenges with gender equality, this dramatic rise in persecution against Baha’i women is an alarming escalation.”
More than two-thirds of the Bahá’ís arrested, summoned, tried or imprisoned in Iran in recent months were women, according to the BIC report.
An earlier UN report in 2022 urged the Islamic Republic to end its ‘systematic persecution’ of religious minorities, including Bahá’ís.
The Bahá’í community is among the most severely persecuted religious minorities in Iran, according to UN experts. The experts said they had received reports in 2022 that more than 1,000 members of the faith were awaiting imprisonment following arrest.
