{"id":93067,"date":"2026-05-01T16:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/93067\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:06:08","slug":"anthony-azizi-on-rising-bahai-persecution-amid-u-s-conflict-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/93067\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Azizi on Rising Baha\u2019i Persecution Amid U.S. Conflict in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIranian American actor Anthony Azizi says the continuing Middle East conflict has sparked rising persecution of Iran<\/a>\u2019s Baha\u2019i minority, including its members being jailed and tortured under the threat of execution.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis a war on human rights and humanity and people who have no rights,\u201d Azizi, a veteran series regular on U.S. dramas like CSI, Tehran and Gaumont TV\u2019s The Deal, tells The Hollywood Reporter. He stars in\u00a0Cast Aside the Clouds, an Iran-set romance thriller about a young Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed woman, played by Parmiss Sehat, who navigates her faith and systemic persecution.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe indie from co-directors Mary Darling, Bre Vader and Felicia Sobhani will have a U.S. premiere on May 18 at Cinema Village in New York City, followed by a Los Angeles premiere from June 4 at Lumiere Music Hall. There\u2019s additional theatrical dates set in Chicago and northern Virginia in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tShot in Athens doubling as Tehran, Cast Aside the Clouds has Azizi playing Farhad Khosrovi, a bookstore owner whose daughter Utab (Sehat) attends a secret university aligned with the Iranian Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed spiritualist faith.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the bookstore is attacked, a hospitalized Utab meets a young Muslim neurologist, Dr. Sasan Naderi, played by Behtash Fazlali, and they fall for one another. With a romance between a Muslim and a member of the Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed faith opposed by both of their families, their relationship is also tested when Utab learns Sasan has plans to go to Germany and she is arrested, imprisoned and tortured for being a Baha\u2019i.<\/p>\n

\n\tA drama about persecution in Iran resonates with Azizi, who was born in Tehran and into a Baha\u2019i family where relatives lost jobs, were jailed, had property confiscated and two defiant uncles were executed after refusing to disavow their Baha\u2019i faith.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoth of my uncles rejected that notion and said there\u2019s no way we will ever renounce what we believe is the elixir for all of mankind\u2019s problems. You\u2019re asking us to renounce what we believe is the answer. So they did not renounce their faith in Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h\u00a0and were murdered. Simply murdered,\u201d Azizi recalled of his family members defying their interrogator and sticking to their belief in the Iranian founder of the Baha\u2019i faith. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Iranian American actor argues the long-standing persecution of the Baha\u2019is in Iran has only escalated with the current Middle East tensions. \u201cTo murder people on the basis of their religious belief, it\u2019s unreal to me that this is happening in 2026,\u201d Azizi added. <\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Darling, while pointing to persecution of the Baha\u2019is in Iran going back to the 1800s, echoed how the current Middle East crisis had escalated that threat to the religious minority. \u201cBecause of the ongoing war in Iran, the Baha\u2019is are being scapegoated as spies for Israel, spies for America,\u201d she warned. <\/p>\n

\n\tDarling pointed to recent high profile imprisonments of Baha\u2019i cousins Peyvand Naimi and Borna Naimi, who have undergone torture to force confessions and face possible death sentences. \u201cIt\u2019s really horrible. They blindfold them, they beat them, they put them in a chair, they cover their heads, then they try to force confessions for being spies. And they think they\u2019re going to die,\u201d the director insisted. <\/p>\n

\n\tHollywood actors Penn Badgley, Mark Ruffalo<\/a> and Rainn Wilson<\/a> have released an Instagram video calling for the release of the Naimi cousins from the infamous Kerman Prison.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther recent imprisonments of Baha\u2019i women include Faranak Zabihi being held in Tir Kola Prison after an April 8 arrest, and Neda Badakhsh, 63, who received a 10-year prison sentence in the Dowlatabad Prison in Isfahan.<\/p>\n

\n\tDarling, who co-wrote her romantic thriller along with fellow Baha\u2019i and husband Clark Donnelly,\u00a0added the title for her Cast Aside the Clouds film came from a poem by Iranian writer Forough Farrokhzad about replacing ignorance with world unity, a key tenet of the Baha\u2019i faith. \u201cShe talks about casting away these clouds, these veils of ignorance that get between us and the reality around us, that we are actually one big family,\u201d the director argued.<\/p>\n

\n\tDarling added her Persian and English language drama also hopes to open up a wider discussion about religious persecution worldwide \u2014 from Uyghurs in China and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East. To that end, she\u2019s looking to the upcoming U.S. theatrical runs leading to a wider distribution of Cast Aside the Clouds after ongoing discussions. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe see this as a very, very important story and we know there are distributors out there who would be interested in being on the right side of history on this,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian American actor Anthony Azizi says the continuing Middle East conflict has sparked rising persecution of Iran\u2019s Baha\u2019i…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[559,34,32847,32848],"class_list":["post-93067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-international","tag-iran","tag-mark-ruffalo","tag-rainn-wilson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116500180738878148","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}