"Yes, very. How sad the historical story. Once the religion of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and the Persian Empire.. now only 30,000 inside the country, and probably less than 130,000 worldwide."
I made friends with a man of this faith. He was from Bombay, held a Masters in Languages, and was a Chartered Accountant.
The Shah invited these Persian people to return, which is what my friend did. He worked for a major US construction firm in Tehran. He met a woman (of their faith) in Tehran, and married.
He was taken out of Iran, during the mullah takeover, the same as Americans, Brits, other westerners.
As a citizen of the British Commonwealth, he would be able to reside in Britain or Canada, for sure. However he got a Green Card, and has become a US citizen.
They are shrinking in number, because they marry only within the faith.
When islam took over Persia, they fled to India/Pakistan (and a few apparently remained, hence the article).
Back in 1980, he stated nobody was safe, under islam, in Iran. Since then, I have met Iranian Christians, Jews and Bahai that always confirmed that view.
Just as an aside, the primary reason for the collapse of the religion was a 20-year long religious war between Zoarastrian Persia and Christian Byzantium. This was all going on while Mohammad was creating his religion and unifying the Arab penninsula under his rule.
The war between Byzantium and Persia was quite devastating and both Empires suffered body and soul during it - Persian armies made it to the gates of Constantinople, and also siezed Jerusalem, descrating many Christian shrines; in return, and in winning the war, the Byzantines invaded the Persian heartland and destroyed the central shrine of Zoaraster. Its hard to keep your religion going at a time like that - and when an exhausted Byzantium and Persia shortly had to face a rising Islam, they just couldn't do it...
Byzantium lost Syria, Israel, Egypt and Libya, while Persia was conquered in its entirety. Given the nature of Islamic conquest and given the physical and spiritual exhaustion of Persian society, they rather rapidly converted to Islam after the conquest...in fact, such supposedly Moslem things as secluded women and wearing a Burka were originally Persian social constructs which Islam took on after the conquest of Persia...Mohammad's wives went out in public unescorted and did not wear a Burka.