Thank you very much, Mr. Sweet.
It's very difficult to respond to that question without first saying that the persecution any people face is intolerable. What is happening to the Bahá’í is symptomatic of what is happening to many groups of Iranian people.
Probably what distinguishes the situation of the Bahá’ís that first, they are not recognized as a religious minority and are therefore not protected by legal structures; second is the “Bahá’í question” memorandum issued by the Iranian government in 1991, which was brought to light by the UN in 1993, in which a strategy is mapped out to deliberately block the development of the Bahá’í community. I'm not aware of a similar strategy for other communities.
I think that, as horrific as all of the suffering is for all of the people unjustly dealt with in Iran, what distinguishes this community is the inveterate hatred of the Iranian government toward it and its desire to block, stop, and suffocate it in any way that it can.