Community Leader Recounts Iranian Baha’is Perils In Prison Letter
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran International
A former leader of the Iranian Baha’i community says the Islamic Republic gives them no chance of “leading a normal life” on account of their faith.
Iran International
A former leader of the Iranian Baha’i community says the Islamic Republic gives them no chance of “leading a normal life” on account of their faith.
“For forty-five years, we Baha’is have been constantly disqualified from leading a normal life in our ancestral homeland,” Mahvash Sabet, a former member of the Baha’i community’s leadership group wrote in a letter from Tehran’s Evin Prison.
She reflected on the impact of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, stating, "Our ancestral homeland was abruptly taken from us, and we became 'the others'." Sabet recounted the misfortunes suffered by the Baha’i community, including the execution of nearly 250 of its members and the confiscation of assets belonging to many others.
The Shia clergy consider the Baha’i faith as a heretical sect. With approximately 300,000 adherents in Iran, Baha’is face systematic persecution, discrimination, and harassment. They are barred from public sector employment and, in certain instances, have been terminated from private sector jobs due to pressure from authorities.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with its followers.
In her letter, a copy of which was received by Iran International, Sabet has used the term “disqualified” (radd-e salahiyat) to describe Iranian Baha’is deprivation of civil and human rights including freedom of religion, the right to higher education, and most jobs.
In the context of ideological screening primarily carried out by security and intelligence bodies, Radd-e salahiyat means “found disqualified” for a position or status. Screening is conducted in a wide range of situations including higher education, civil service, participation in national sports teams, and elections.
Belief in the absolute guardianship and rule of a jurisprudent cleric (velayat-e motlaqqeh-ye faqih) and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic as a governing system are two of the fundamental requirements for being “qualified” in these situations.
Sabet, now seventy-one, was dismissed from her job as a school principal after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. She has been consistently denied the opportunity to publish her poetry in Iran, where books undergo scrutiny and rejection not solely based on their content, but often due to the authors' ideology, religion, or private lives.
In her letter, Sabet, who has spent nearly twelve years in prison for her faith, reveals that authorities appropriated a sand processing factory her husband had been constructing just a week before its launch. “He was disqualified, too!” she wrote in her letter.
In 2009, seven leaders of the Baha’i community, collectively known as Yaran (friends or helpers), including Sabet, were arrested. They were sentenced by a revolutionary court to 20 years in prison on fabricated charges, including "insulting" Islamic sanctities, propaganda against the regime, and alleged spying for Israel, for which the prosecutor had sought death sentences.
Some of the charges, including espionage, were dropped by an appeal court in 2010, resulting in a reduction of their sentences to 10 years. However, authorities reinstated the original 20-year sentences in 2011.
All members of the Yaran group were released from prison between September 2017 and December 2018. However, Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, another female member of the group, were arrested again on August 1, 2022.
Both women endured months of solitary confinement while awaiting their trial. In December, they were handed another decade-long prison term for "forming a group to act against national security," a sentence they are currently serving.
"We aim to reach 4 million barrels per day of oil production for next year," Fars news affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard cited Owji as saying, referring to the next Iranian year starting March 20, 2024.
Iran has increased its daily crude exports to around 1.5 million barrels this year, but a substantial part of the shipments came from stockpiled oil on tankers and ground facilities. These stocks have dwindled and if Iran wants to keep up the pace of exports, it has to increase production.
A regional oil expert told Iran International that in mid-2022, Tehran had a stockpile of 115 million barrels, but it sold most of the oil and now has 27 million barrels left, barely enough to sustain one month of exports.
China is the main buyer, despite full US sanctions imposed on Iranian oil exports in May 2019. Initially, Iran’s shipments dropped significantly to around 300,000 barrels per day, but after the Biden administration launched indirect talks with Tehran to revive the JCPOA nuclear deal, Chinese purchases increased. Many believe that the United States has been soft on cracking down, in order not to jeopardize chances for a nuclear deal.
The oil minister praised the current government for making substantial investments in the oil and gas sectors. He stated that 132 projects have been completed at a cost of $28.5 billion and there are 50 other planned projects that will cost $47.5 billion.
These numbers seem to be too high given Iran’s financial crisis, with the national currency near its all-time lows at 500,000 per US dollar and inflation surpassing 50 percent. If the government is investing its windfall revenues from increased oil exports back into the oil industry, it could be considered a great planning. However, no one knows how much Iran earns from its oil exports, as it is categorized as a national security matter.
However, Owji’s pledge to boost production faces its own challenges. Iran has a serious shortage of natural gas, despite holding the world’s second biggest reserves. The government is juggling between ever-increasing domestic consumer and commercial demand and its need for power generation, exports and using needed gas for oil production.
To prevent a rapid decline in production, Iran needs to re-inject nearly 300 million cubic meters of gas per day (mcm/d) into its old oil deposits. However, the latest available official data reveals that the actual daily gas re-injection in 2018 was less than 37 million cubic meters. The situation must have deteriorated even further in the past five years, as gas production rapidly declines. Its daily production hardly reaches 800 mcm.
In addition, advanced foreign technology is needed, which is very difficult to secure amid US sanctions. The lack of technology hurts both gas and oil production. Even the Chinese and the Russians have not been wiling to render any significant assistance.
In the meantime, Iran’s economy minister revealed on Tuesday that the government is basing next year’s budget on daily exports of 1.35 million barrels per day, which is realistic. However, the price the government expects to get at 65 euros per barrel seems greatly optimistic. Given Iran’s current tight state of finances and shortages of foreign currencies, it is more likely that it offers steep discounts to buyers or loses money in the process of illicit oil shipments.
In previous years also the budget was based on rosy calculations and then faced huge deficits. At least half of the government’s operating budget comes from oil exports.