The Tehran zoo remained closed Tuesday as a mystery surrounds the killing of several big cats, stunning the city and leaving angry mourners demanding answers from authorities amid accusations of politics and environmental bungling.

Between eight and 14 lions and tigers were reportedly shot in the head over the weekend amid conflicting reports regarding an outbreak of glanders, a potentially lethal disease that normally affects equine species but can spread to humans and other mammals.

After animal-rights activists and horrified zoo patrons expressed outrage at the killings, authorities later claimed that the animals were euthanized by injection, and they revised the number of big cats killed from 14 to 10 and then eight.

But the tragedy may reveal an even darker truth: Critics now claim the animals were victims of an irresponsible and politicized publicity stunt by government and zoo officials who claimed the cats were part of a program to revive the wild tiger population surrounding the Caspian Sea, where the animals have not been seen in over 50 years.

"[Bringing the tigers] from the very beginning was a just an empty and unscientific measure, because the Siberian tiger is not the same as the Mazandaran [Caspian Sea] tiger, which is extinct, and secondly, to revive a species we need at least a hundred animals and over 4,000 square kilometers of habitat," environmental science professor Nizar Karami told Babylon & Beyond.

"They brought the tigers here and imprisoned them in a very poorly maintained zoo where I would not dare take my son, who is in love with animals, because the zoo in Tehran is so unhygienic and inhumane for keeping animals," he added.

Police descended on a Tehran theater earlier this week and halted performances of the play "Hedda Gabler" by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen after an Iranian news agency blasted the classic drama in a review.

Coincinding with the incident, media reports surfaced about the creation of a new body to regulate cultural affairs in the Islamic Republic, signaling that a wider crackdown on artists might be underway.   

Theatergoers had flocked to Tehran's City Theater on Tuesday night to watch the drama, which had been playing since Jan 5. But when they arrived they were met by a crowd of police officers and informed that the play had been suspended.

[Updated, Jan. 6, 10:56 a.m.: Iran's state-controlled Al-Alam television channel is quoting an "informed source" as denying reports by other news outlets that an American woman had been arrested at the Armenian border. According to Iran's Arabic language channel, the woman arrived at the border requesting entry but was denied entrance because she did not have a visa.]

A woman referred to by authorities as American, who is of possible Armenian Christian descent, has been arrested on espionage charges, an Iranian newspaper reported Thursday, as officials launched a major crackdown on the country's Christian minority for alleged proselytizing.

According to the Iranian daily newspaper Iran, a mouthpiece of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the 55-year-old "American" was detained in the Iranian-Armenian border city of Nordouz.

Customs officials allegedly discovered she was carrying hidden "spy equipment" and microphones on her body.

According to the privately owned conservative Iranian news website Tabnak, the woman -- identified in media reports as Hal Talayan -- had spy equipment in her teeth at the time of arrest and feared she'd be killed by Armenian security forces if she were returned to Armenia.

"If sent back to Armenia by the Islamic Republic of Iran, then the security forces of that country will kill her," Tabnak quoted her as saying.

The semiofficial Fars News Agency, quoting a "well-informed source," reported that the woman was detained by customs officials a week ago.

Meanwhile, Iran appears to be ratcheting up pressure on the country's mostly Armenian Christian minority, reportedly arresting Christian leaders and missionaries on accusations of promoting "hard-line" religious views with foreign backing. Morteza Tamadon, the governor of Tehran province, where the Christians reportedly were detained, said more arrests would be carried out soon.

Christianity is recognized as a religion in Iran, but Christians there are not allowed to proselytize.

After making startling advances in expanding public education and increasing literacy over the last three decades, Iran appears to be facing a major setback in education.

The number of students dropping out of school is more than 25%, says the secretary of the Assn. of Iranian Social Workers, according to news website Aftabnews.

The official, Mostafa Eghlimi, added that the figure is especially worrisome because kids who drop out of school are at greater risk of getting involved in crime or drugs, already an epidemic in Iran.

Eghlimi blamed the educational establishment for the high dropout rates. 

He cited outdated textbooks, overworked teaching staff, lack of specialized care for different students and kids' personal problems outside the classroom as the reasons for the  dropout problem. 

Officials are saying that females are faring better than males:  The number of illiterate girls is decreasing, while more and more boys aren't learning to read, according to Mohammad Mehdizadeh, an official for the nation's anti-literacy campaign cited by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

In fact, he said, for the first time in the history of Iran, the number of illiterate men is higher than that of women in Iran.

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Iranian students hold an anti-American placard during an annual state-backed rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, marking the anniversary of takeover of the embassy in 1979 by militant students. Credit: Vahid Salemi / Associated Press

Forget the Boy Scouts. As of Monday, newborns and children up to the age of 7 can sign up for the paramilitary Basiji organization, according to the Mehr news agency (Persian link).

Parents are invited to register their bouncing little baby boys and girls at the Basiji office in Tehran, where they can receive their membership cards.

The Basijis operate as additional police and security forces under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and were a key element in the violent crackdown on peaceful protests after Iran's disputed 2009 presidential elections.

The organization recently won approval from parliament to increase its membership to 30 million, of which 1.5 million should be "active" members.

 -- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Basiji forces display their might in an annual parade. Credit: Hamid Forootan / ISNA

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest aide and confidante is back it again. 

Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the president's chief of staff, is stirring up trouble by challenging the clergy's attitudes toward art and music in unusually harsh and abrasive terms. 

“Some do not feel and understand music, so they declare it haram," or sinful under Islam, the Persian-language Atynews reported him as saying this week.

Mashaei was speaking  to a group of artists at the Four Seasons Museum in the central city of Arak.

He told those assembled that he knew the clergy might accuse him of heresy for his remarks, but he didn't care.

"Some pray so much that they forgot God," he was quoted as saying. "They are submerged in mysticism at the end of which there is no God, but delusion. Then they claim that they have seen the light."

Are Iran's attempts to deal with international sanctions a cause of the extremely high air-pollution levels afflicting the capital city of Tehran?

A report Monday on the Persian-language news website Khabaronline says record pollution choking Tehran for the last month may be the result of low-quality gasoline Iran has been producing to counter the effects of international sanctions.

Iran, one of the world's biggest oil producers, nevertheless had to import much of its refined fuel to satiate the demands of its population.

But international sanctions over Iran's' nuclear program are spurring many companies to stop doing business with the Islamic Republic.

Not to worry, said Iranian authorities. Iran can make its own high-quality gasoline.

But as residents of Tehran are choked by continued stifling smog, consumers are becoming more doubtful.  

Iran has invested heavily in literacy campaigns over the past 30 years, but some Iranian officials and high-ranking clerics suggest Iranians aren't embracing books after all.

They warned recently that "the culture of reading books" among Iranians is dwindling and, in a string of public speeches during a book event this week, called for the launching of campaigns to increase reading nationwide.

"The society places greater value on sandwiches than it does on books,” Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency quoted the high-ranking cleric Ayatollah Yusef Tabatabainejad as saying in a speech he delivered in Isfahan. "Some only read and study books for financial gain and consider book reading a profession, which is a pity. We need to promote reading in a way to develop logical and rational thinking."

Now that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has concluded his controversial two-day tour of Lebanon and returned home without provoking a war with Israel, the real question is what, if anything, has changed?

Both Iran's ally in Lebanon, the militant Shiite group Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government tried to cast Ahmadinejad's stay as a routine visit from a neighboring head of state, an assertion that was somewhat at odds with the hero's welcome the Iranian leader received from the party and its supporters.

"I don't think this was a routine visit at all," said political analyst Kamel Wazne, founder of the Beirut-based Center of American Strategic Studies. "The Shia and Hezbollah came out in force to make sure that those who still doubted now know that Ahmadinejad has support and that he is welcome in large parts of the country."

Iran,  said Wazne, was able to send a strong message to Israel that it has powerful friends within striking distance of the Jewish state should Israel launch an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Gold markets across Iran remained shuttered in recent days as a strike against a 3% value-added tax entered its second week. 

Video of the markets uploaded to the Internet from the capital of Tehran all the way to the southern provincial capital of Ahvaz showed darkened, locked stalls and empty corridors.

Monday was a religious holiday in Iran, and observers are waiting to see whether the strike will continue Tuesday. 

Merchants and jewelers claim the government is looking to fill its coffers by taxing small businesses unfairly. The government continues to paint the union of goldsmiths and jewelers as a group of greedy and corrupt businessmen.

Lawmaker Hasan Khastehband, a member of the parliamentary economic committee, blamed the strike on a handful of gold sellers involved in illegal smuggling.

"[These gold sellers] are agitating the goldsmiths to impede the implementation of the VAT because they do not want to make their illegal transactions transparent and revealed," he was quoted as saying by local media outlets.

Tehran's main gold bazaar is usually glittering with precious baubles and jewelry fit for royalty, but the last several days have seen it shuttered and empty as the union of goldsmiths and jewelers strikes against a 3% value-added tax.

"We'll stay on strike until the negotiation gets results," Ali Mosavi, a goldsmith in the bazaar, told Babylon & Beyond. "This is the third year we are protesting and so far we have been able to resist [the tax hike]."

The strike appears to be affecting the retail and wholesale gold markets of Tehran's main bazaar as well as the markets of other Iranian cities like Esfahan, Mashhad and Tabriz, but not non-union jewelry stores outside the bazaars.

The government's economic committee issued a statement condemning the strike against the tax, which, it claims, will eliminate illegal transactions and money laundering in the gold market.

"We, the members of the committee, support the law and the stance of tax office and ask the intelligence bodies and judiciary branch to recognize the certain goldsmiths who are impeding the execution of the law and punish them strictly with maximum penalty and review their documents and accounts thoroughly and levy the tax up to the last cent," the statement said.

[Updated, Monday, Sept. 27, 7:34 a.m. PDT: Babylon & Beyond has confirmed that the strike has spread to markets in the Karimkhan Zand and Tajrish areas of Tehran. Meanwhile, local press estimates that the value-added tax has raised around $52 million for the government since it was levied.]

Conflicting statements have emerged over whether the remains of a 2,000-year-old Parthian fortress known as Tappeh Dokhtar, or the "Virgin's Mound," dating from Iran's pre-Islamic past were recently demolished in the Iranian city of Hamadan to make room for a mosalla, a Muslim prayer center often used by hard-line supporters of the government.

An official in Hamadan told Babylon & Beyond over the phone that the remains of the monument, which stood on a hilltop in the area known as Tappeh Mosalla, were still "intact" and emphasized that "no damage" had been caused to it.

But statements from other local officials and researchers on Iranian cultural heritage sites suggest otherwise.

"Until two years ago the remains of the ruins of the fortress, which was possibly Parthian, was standing and was destroyed when the construction of the mosalla began," Mehrnush Najafi-Ragheb, spokeswoman for Hamadan's Municipality Islamic Council, told Iran's Culture Heritage News Agency.