A spokesman said the Bibles were confiscated to block missionaries who “are trying to deviate our youth.”

Dr. Majid Abhari, adviser to the social issues committee of the parliament in Iran, told the official Iranian news agency, Mehr, “With regard to the activities of these Christian missionaries to deceive people specially youngsters, they have begun a huge campaign by spending huge sums and false propaganda for deviating the public. These books were made with the best paper in the world in pocket size.”

“The important point in this issue that should be considered by intelligence, judicial and religious agencies,” said Abhari, according to Mohabat News, “is that all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam, otherwise what does this huge number of Bibles mean?”

Mohabat News also reported that last November, police officers and revolutionary guards seized 300 Bibles from a bus and “in a shameful action, burned them all in the village of Darishk.”

Mohabat News calls itself a team of Farsi-speaking news professionals. “The Lord has placed in our hearts,” they state on their website, a burden “to bring awareness of what is happening in the world to our Farsi-speaking readers in “Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan” — and “to better inform the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ and Christian ministries around the world about the life and the welfare of Christian minorities in these Farsi-speaking countries.”