Before the believers could celebrate these achievements, a new challenge of staggering proportions was unveiled by Shoghi Effendi. Impelled by historic forces that only he was in a position to appreciate, the Guardian announced the launching at the forthcoming Rid.ván of a decade-long, world-embracing Plan, which he designated a “Spiritual Crusade”. Engaging the energies of all the twelve National Spiritual Assemblies then in existence—the twelfth being that of the Italo-Swiss community—it called for the establishment of the Faith in one hundred and thirty-one additional countries and territories, together with the formation of forty-four new National Spiritual Assemblies, the incorporation of thirty-three of these, a vast increase in Bahá’í literature, the erection of Houses of Worship in Iran and Germany (the former being replaced by Temples in both Africa and Australia when the Tehran project was blocked), and the expansion of the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies around the world to a total of five thousand, of which three hundred and fifty must be incorporated. Nothing in their collective experience had prepared the Bahá’ís of the world for so colossal an undertaking. The magnitude of the challenge was set out by Shoghi Effendi in a cablegram of 8 October 1952: Feel hour propitious to proclaim to the entire Bahá’í world the projected launching ... the fate-laden, soul-stirring, decade-long, world-embracing Spiritual Crusade involving ... the concerted participation of all National Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’í world aiming at the immediate extension of Bahá’u’lláh’s spiritual dominion ... in all remaining Sovereign States, Principal Dependencies comprising Principalities, Sultanates, Emirates, Shaykhdoms, Protectorates, Trust Territories, and Crown Colonies scattered over the surface of the entire planet. The entire body of the avowed supporters of Bahá’u’lláh’s all-conquering Faith are now summoned to achieve in a single decade feats eclipsing in totality the achievements which in the course of the eleven preceding decades illuminated the annals of Bahá’í pioneering.(97) Victory in so ambitious an enterprise would mean that the embrace of the Faith would span the globe, that the institutional foundations of its Administrative Order would expand at least five-fold, and that its community life would be enriched through the participation of believers from a vast number of as yet untapped cultures, nations and tribes.