Iranian Bahá’í Exile in Andorra Fears Return After Challenging Regime

Badí Daemi, an Iranian resident of Andorra for the past 40 years, has not returned to his homeland since 2004 out of fears for his safety as a member of the persecuted Bahá’í faith.

Daemi left Tehran at age 17 in 1975, four years before the Islamic Revolution toppled the Shah’s regime. His family settled in Pamplona, Spain, but maintained ties to Iran despite the risks to Bahá’ís. He returned in 1980 to marry his wife, the mother of his daughters, and the couple moved to Andorra five years later.

Regular visits to Iran ended for Daemi after a 2004 world religions congress in Barcelona. There, an Iranian delegation claimed the country was a haven for religious minorities. Daemi challenged their statements as a representative of Andorra’s Bahá’í community, prompting him to conclude that returning would endanger him. “If I went back to Iran, I could be in danger,” he recounted recently.

From Andorra, Daemi has watched repression intensify over the years. He described ethnic and religious persecution against groups like Baluchis—Sunni Muslims denied their own mosques—and Kurds, alongside morality police crackdowns on women that worried his female relatives during their trips. One brother-in-law served five years in prison after explaining the Bahá’í faith to someone who turned out to be a secret agent setting a trap.

Daemi highlighted the regime’s unfulfilled promises from its revolutionary days, such as free light and water. Instead, rampant inflation now demands high incomes just to make ends meet.

These days, with recent US and Israeli strikes on Iran, the emotional distance feels both shorter and greater. Daemi stays in close contact with family, a cornerstone of Persian culture. His wife’s brothers live in Sari, away from airstrike zones, though he recently lost touch briefly with a cousin in Tehran. Communication happens in sporadic bursts, relayed through family members.

On the attacks, Daemi urged realism, noting expert views that they aim to curb China’s oil access and challenge Iranian hegemony. Yet he stressed collective responsibility: “Humanity and the Persian people cannot tolerate more injustice than they are experiencing. This will change, though I don’t know when.”

Quoting Bahá’u’lláh, the faith’s prophet, he added: “Humanity is like a tree, and all human beings are its fruits, leaves, and branches—there are no good or bad ones, like in a Western movie.” He called for a reformed UN without veto rights, focused on people, animals, and the planet, to end conflicts fed by division.