by Mona Mahmoudi’s parents were among the first members of Iran’s Baha’i religious minority to be executed under the Islamic Republic’s decades-long crackdown.
When her mother, the country’s first female meteorologist, was arrested along with seven others, her daughter wanted her executed quickly.
“I knew they would be executed and I hoped it would happen sooner than later,” she told The Telegraph during a Baha’i event in London.
“There were so many cases of Bahas being tortured in prison,” she said, “and I didn’t want them to be tortured.”
Mrs Mahmoudi was in east London for an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of a dark chapter in the persecution of Baha’is in Iran – the public deaths of 10 Baha’i women, including a 17-year-old girl.
Women have been oppressed in Iran “for many years”, Omid Djalili, a British-Iranian comedian who is a Baha’i, told the Telegraph.
“The regime is trying very hard to stop people from complaining about the prosecution of the Baha’is,” he said.
Mrs Mahmoudi says her family had a “pretty easy life” before the 1979 revolution, which brought the clerical establishment to power.
The family of five, led by her meteorologist and children’s TV presenter mother, would travel to the beach in northern Iran on weekends in the 1970s.
The Islamic Revolution, like a sudden, violent storm, affected the lives of the Mahmoudis.
Their faith, which was once a cornerstone of their identity, was the target of the new regime’s wrath.
Overnight, Mrs. Mahmoudi’s parents went from respected professionals to persecuted outcasts.
The couple were fired from their jobs and asked to pay back their one year’s salary to the new government.
The family was caught in the eye of political and religious times. The new establishment banned the Baha’i faith and unleashed a stream of persecution.
Thousands were imprisoned, their lands confiscated and their right to higher education revoked.
Shia Islam is the state religion in Iran. The constitution recognizes many minority faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, but not the Baha’i faith.
Since September 2022, when Mahsa Amini died in custody after being arrested for allegedly violating hijab rules and the subsequent national protests, the Iranian government has stepped up its crackdown on the Baha’i community.
The authorities have imprisoned hundreds of them in the past year, as well as confiscating or destroying personal property and their cemeteries.
They are conducting daily searches of the residences of Baha’i citizens throughout the country.
The persecution of Baha’is following the protests follows a common pattern of the Iranian regime targeting minority groups during periods of wider social and political tension.
Houshang Mahmoudi, Mona’s father, was also a lawyer and a member of the national assembly of Baha’is in Iran, in charge of overseeing the affairs of the Baha’i community.
When the nine-member assembly met on 21 August 1980, their hopes and plans for their beleaguered community were still alive, but soon the forces of the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were catching up.
In a moment, the entire leadership of the Baha’i community in Iran disappeared – kidnapped, never to be seen again.
“It was a terrible feeling,” says Mrs. Mahmoudi. “If they were caught and in jail, it would be a different feeling, but they’re gone.”
Mrs. Mahmoudi believes that her father and other members of the congregation were executed immediately, without the knowledge of their family.
They resented the loss, and soon elected a new national assembly. Among those chosen to lead was Zhinus Mahmoudi, Mona’s mother.
But it was not long before the storm that had swept the first assembly ended. On December 13, 1981, history repeated itself with cruel precision.
As Zhinus and her fellow assembly members gathered, the IRGC struck again. This time, there was no mystery, no fading into the unknown.
“My mother was elected to the next national assembly,” says Mrs Mahmoudi.
“About a year and a half later, when they had a meeting, the IRGC raided again and arrested them all.”
The assembly members were taken to the notorious Evin prison.
For two weeks, Mona lived in a state of agonizing suspense. But unlike the uncertainty that shrouded her father’s fate, she knew what was coming.
The eight arrested members, including Zhinus, were executed without trial.
The woman who once read the skies for Iran, who rose to lead her religious community in its darkest hour, was forever silent.
Mrs. Mahmoudi was living in California at the time and was informed of the deaths by telephone from the national congregation of the Baha’is in the United States.
“They’ve lived a very useful life and I’m very proud of them,” she says.
“My parents had a choice, they could have left Iran but they wanted to stay and serve even though they knew that would be the price of their lives.”
Mrs. Mahmoudi, a retired cyber security expert based in Phoenix and a university lecturer, now has a foundation with her siblings in honor of their parents, providing education to children in private countries, among other activities.
Narges Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison and a number of other prominent female prisoners criticized the regime last month for its “unrelenting oppression and injustices that the Bahais suffer for their faith”.
As the attendees of the London event gathered, a small card lay on the floor.
“The dawn chorus is an outburst of birdsong,” he says. “In Iran, death is done at dawn and just before the morning prayer call.”
