It's a difficult question to answer. I think there is a combination of fanatical hatred in certain quarters that have been indoctrinated with this demonology for many years and those who genuinely believe that the Bahá'ís are out to destroy Islam. But I think at another level there is a much more cynical scapegoating of the Bahá'ís as a sort of convenient political tactic to rally the masses. We know hate-mongering and political homogenization is one of the oldest and most convenient instruments of authoritarian regimes.
The Bahá'ís historically have been used in this sort of “othering” and stigmatization. This device has been used to consolidate Iran's Shiite identity. In that sense, it is a contrived and instrumentalized use of religious belief in order to consolidate political power.
But I want to end by saying that one of the promising signs, which Ms. Tamas alluded to, is that in addition to Ayatollah Montazeri, you have student leaders, human rights leaders, Kurdish leaders, Communist Party members, an incredibly broad array of Iranians who are now standing in solidarity with Bahá'ís. Recently, 300 Iranian non-Bahá'í intellectuals wrote a letter of apology for their silence in the face of the persecution of the Bahá'ís, and that is what is really scaring the regime. That there is now widespread sympathy for the Bahá'ís among the Iranian public, and they're losing their grip on power. That's why the ominous prospect of an escalation of violence in the coming months goes hand in hand with great promise of the emergence of a liberal culture in Iran.