A raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of "blasphemy". Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. — Morning Star News, June 3, 2024, Pakistan.

The Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye. Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle. — Morning Star News, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to "merciless torture" at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later.... Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices. — britishasianchristians.org, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

"Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions.... these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith.... They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people." — Sunil Gulzar, Christian socio-political activist, Morning Star News, May 29, 2024, Pakistan.

Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks, general desecrations, desecrations of cemeteries, defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts, and bomb threats. — France.

"Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming 'Islamophobia!'" — Tommy Robinson, British activist, x.com, May 1, 2024, England.

The Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included "Allah Akbar," "Remove this church from here," "Only Muslims are here," "We don't want churches, we want mosques," and "Islam is the only true religion!" — orthodoxtimes.com, May 15, 2024, Kosovo.

All candidates are career government employees molded by the same ideology and committed to "total and absolute obedience" to the "Supreme Guide".

This time, we don't even have the usual Punch-&-Judy show by "Reformists" and "Fundamentalists."

However, the campaign has thrown a grenade in Iranian political life by presenting immigration, in the words of Gen. Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, one of the wannabes, as "the root-cause of all major problems the nation faces."

Qalibaf hasn't offered a shred of evidence to back his claims. Nor has the government of which he has been a part for 40 years produced a single serious report on Afghan immigrants in Iran.

The fact, however, is that no Afghan has been involved in any of the 22 terrorist attacks that Tehran has attributed to ISIS since 2019.

Tehran supported various anti-Taliban armed groups and, once the US-backed Islamic Republic was placed in Kabul, became the third-largest donor of aid to the Karzai-Ghani regimes. For about a decade, the flow of refugees was reduced to a trickle.

The flow intensified again after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Surprisingly, since then, trade between the two neighbors has picked up. Last year, Afghanistan was Iran's second-largest trading partner and foreign investor.

And yet, pressure on Afghan refugees in Iran has intensified. At least 6,000 are currently in prison on various charges while many more are subjected to daily insults, intimidation, semi-official racketeering, eviction and unpaid wages.

Even worse, at least 300,000 children, many of them third- or fourth-generation immigrants, are denied access to schooling because they lack official papers necessary.

The manner in which most Afghan immigrants are treated violates Iran's laws.

The 1934 Nationality and Naturalization Act bases the granting of Iranian nationality on the "blood and soil" principle, under which anyone born of Iranian ancestry and anyone born on Iranian soil could demand naturalization as a citizen. Foreign women married o Iranian men automatically become Iranian along with their children.

Yet according to official surveys some 100,000 Afghan women married to Iranians and over 300,000 of their children are categorized as stateless.

The irony is that Afghans are the closest people to Iranians. Part of what became Afghanistan was separated by the British with the Paris Treaty of 1857, in a process that during the notorious Great Game finally put Afghanistan on the map as a buffer state in 1879.

Thus, a judicious reading of the 1934 Act could enable many Afghans to claim citizenship based on common ancestry.

It is sad that the candidates in the Islamic Republic election ignore Iran's own laws, traditions and cultural values.