A spokesman for the US State Department referred to the recent house raids and the arrest of more than thirty Iranian Baha'is associated with a Baha'i education network as the latest evidence of Iran's restrictions on the religion.
The some three-hundred-thousand Baha'is living in Iran are the country's largest religious minority.
Teheran denies any persecution but refuses to recognise the faith which it regards as a heresy.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
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