From the moment of its accreditation, the Bahá’í International Community began to play an energetic role in United Nations’ affairs. An activity that won it much appreciation was a programme carried out, through the expanding network of Bahá’í Assemblies, to provide the public with information about the United Nations itself, and which gave generous support to struggling United Nations associations throughout the world. By 1970, the Community had secured consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This was followed in 1974 by the granting of formal association with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and in 1976 by the acquisition of consultative status with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The influence and expertise developed during these years showed their capacity, in 1955 and 1962, when the Community was successful in securing United Nations’ intervention on behalf of the believers suffering persecution in Iran and Morocco, respectively. * * * * * In 1980, the patient external affairs activities of the National Spiritual Assemblies and the Community’s United Nations Office were suddenly propelled into a new stage of their development. The catalyst was the attempt by the _Sh_í‘ih clergy of Iran to exterminate the Cause in the land of its birth. The consequences were as little anticipated by the Faith’s persecutors as they were by its defenders. Throughout the long decades in which the believers in the cradle of the Faith suffered intermittent persecution for their beliefs, the mullás, who instigated and led these attacks, acted in concert with the country’s succession of monarchs. The latter, ostensibly absolute in their authority, were in fact constrained by political calculations that rendered them vulnerable to outside pressures, particularly from Western governments. So it was that the outrage voiced by Russian, British and other diplomatic missions had compelled Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh, against his will, to bring to an end the orgy of violence that took so many believers’ lives in the early 1850s and threatened that of Bahá’u’lláh Himself. During the twentieth century, his Qájár successors had been similarly concerned to placate the opinion of foreign governments. The pattern was repeated in 1955 when the second of the Pahlaví shahs, who had been induced by the mullás to approve a wave of anti-Bahá’í violence, was forced by United Nations’ protest and by objections on the part of the American government to abruptly halt the campaign—both interventions harbingers of things to come.