President Chaim Herzog yesterday paid an official visit to the Bahai Temple and administrative headquarters of the Bahai faith in Haifa, expressing his solidarity with the members of that faith persecuted in Iran.
He dismissed as “nonsense” the standard Iranian charge of spying for Israel as an excuse for the Iranian regime’s persecution of Bahai members there. “Like the USSR, Iran finds Israel a useful whipping boy,” he said.
Members of the Bahai faith are the largest minority in Iran but are regarded by religious leaders there as heretics. The situation of the 300,000 Bahais has steadily worsened under the Khomeini regime for the past five years.
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