of the proceedings of the official transcripts of the constitution drafting process, Sanasarian states that anti-Bahá'í thought was obvious as there was haggling "over every word and expression of certain articles to assure the exclusion of the Bahá'ís."[27] The final version of the constitution explicitly withheld recognition from the Bahá'ís by stating in Article 13 that the "Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian Iranians are the only recognized religious minorities..."[10] Responding to international criticism due to the exclusion of the Bahá'ís, spokesmen for the government stated, as before, that the Bahá'ís were a "misguided group... whose affiliation and association with world Zionism is a clear fact"[28] and that "Bahá'ísm is not a religion, but a political doctrine."[29]

Starting in late 1979 the new government of the Islamic Republic of Iran systematicallytargeted the leadership of the Bahá'í community by focusing on the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly (NSA) and Local Spiritual Assemblies (LSA). In November 1979, Ali Murad Davudi, the secretary of the NSA, was kidnapped and never seen again.[30] In August 1980 all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly were arrested while meeting at a private home.[10] In a statement on September 10, 1980, then speaker of the House Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, stated that an order for the arrests of the Bahá'ís had been issued, but by October 9, 1980 Rafsanjani changed his statement and said that no members of the NSA were arrested.[10] There has been no further news regarding the nine NSA members since their arrest in 1980, and their fate remains unknown, although there