People are asking me to issue some corrections to this thread, and, while I'm kind of in a rush, here are a few: https://twitter.com/muslimico/status/1287761398584549383

The claim that the Safavids "force-converted" the majority "Sunnis" of Iran is wrought with errors. To begin with, it's inaccurate to think of the "Sunnis" of pre-Safavid Iran as being Sunnis in the same sense as the Ahlul Sunna wal-Jama'ah of today. These Iranian "Sunnis" were

not led by Sunni 'ulema nor did they have the same practices as contemporary Sunnis. There were Sunni 'ulema in Iran at the time, but they were generally disregarded by the populace, who instead looked to the religious leadership of various Sufi tariqat. Many of these Sufi orders

venerated 'Ali even to degrees which orthodox Twelver Shi'a scholars would consider to be ghuluw (extremism), and indeed the Arab Twelver scholars imported by Shah Isma'il I to guide the population to Shi'ism did have to stamp out certain practices that remained as vestiges of

the Sufi leadership of Iran's "Sunnis". These Sufi tariqat inculcated a love of the Prophet's Holy Family (AS) in the masses, and, as such, the transition to Twelver Shi'ism as the official Safavid state religion begun under Isma'il was relatively smooth among the general

populace, regardless of their being identified as Sunnis by historians of today, due to their having been primed by Sufis for veneration of the Ahlulbayt. Likewise, though the OP didn't deny it, it's important to stress that Iran already had a Twelver population. Qom had been a

center of Twelver scholarship for centuries by the time of the institution of Safavid rule, and there were significant Shi'a populations in other cities such as Nishapur, Rayy, and Kashan.

None of this is to deny that the Safavid state dealt harshly with anyone on the basis of religion: Sunni ulema who resisted the push toward Twelver Shi'ism were persecuted, as were some of the Sufi orders and, ironically, Isma'ili and Zaidi Shi'a whose doctrine led them to resist

the new official religion of the state as well. There's no reason to deny persecution carried out by the Safavid state, nor to whitewash any of its indefensible actions, but we must be accurate when addressing the issue of how the institution of Twelver Shi'ism as the official

religion was received by the populace, which was largely unperturbed by being "forced" to become Shi'a. Attendant introduced practices, such as the cursing of the enemies of the Ahlulbayt from the minbars of Iran, went similarly unchallenged by the majority "Sunni" masses, who

did not possess the same values as many Sunnis of today, among whom veneration of all Sahaba is very common, along with an aversion to pilgrimage to shrines, which, similarly, the Sunnis of pre-Safavid Iran did not have any issue with. The reaction of Sunni ulema, on the other

hand, was far more combative than that of the general populace, and this predictably led to their persecution, including by stripping them of their leadership positions, dispossessing them of waqf they oversaw, and even executing ulema in certain cases.

As for the issue of Sunnis in today's Iran, this widespread claim that there are no Sunni mosques in Tehran, or even (as is sometimes claimed) that there are none in the entire country, is patently false. Mehr reported that Iran's Mosque Affairs Regulating Authority recognizes

nine Sunnis mosques in Tehran (where Sunnis are a tiny minority), out of over 15,000 total Sunni mosques across the entirety of Iran. You can find some of these mosques yourself on Google Maps if you're moved to (search e.g. masjid sadeghiyah in Tehran, https://en.mehrnews.com/news/109045/Sunnis-running-9-mosques-in-Tehran

which even has google reviews from people who have attended it, clearly identifying it as a Sunni mosque).

The economic statistics of certain areas such as Balochistan show an undeniable disparity with other regions of the country, where the former has higher poverty rates,

unemployment, and other indicators of economic neglect. It would be foolish to deny something so easily referenced, and something which the Iranian government's official statistics bear out. There's no indication, however, that the status of the economy in these regions has

anything to do with the majority religion of their inhabitants, nor that it's something that is state-sanctioned. Anecdotal reports by Iranians (including Persian Iranians) often acknowledge fairly widespread ethnic discrimination in Iran, an unfortunate fact of social life in

the country (as in virtually all other countries) which is in no way connected to any state policy of discrimination. The ethnic makeup of these regions with large Sunni populations is equally at odds with the Persian majority, and it's far more likely that this is the chief

contributing factor to economic discrimination adversely affecting Balochs and Kurds than it is that it's due to the Sunni religion practiced by the majority of these populations.

This goes to explaining religious disparity among the incarcerated population as well: rather than

being imprisoned for being Sunni, many of Iran's incarcerated persons come from economically deprived areas driven to crime (particularly to do with drugs: southeastern Iran has large non-Persian, Sunni populations and is also a key part on the drug trafficking corridor

originating in Afghanistan). Again, this isn't to excuse incarceration by the Iranian state, but to offer a far more likely alternative explanation for why Sunnis make up such a comparatively large portion of the prison population than their overall demographics reflect, versus

the reductive and unsubstantiated intimation that they're being persecuted simply for being Sunni.

OP's claims about the state fearing disloyalty from Sunnis explaining their apparent exclusion from parts of the political process are similarly unsubstantiated and unsourced, and

the fact of Iranian political life is that all candidates for any position are ultimately subject to some form of political screening, and failing these ideological purity checks excludes far more Shi'a from positions of power than it does Sunnis or any other religious minority.

I'm unaware of where these vague claims of religious persecution in public schools come from, which makes them difficult to address in any more depth than asking for sources (which the reports of e.g. USCIRF provided by OP didn't provide).

It bears mentioning that in virtually all of these Sunni-majority regions contain insurgent groups battling the Iranian state, and only in Balochistan have they ever had a Sunni religious character. What looks to a biased Sunni observer like political persecution of Sunni leaders

is usually, rather, political repression of separatist armed insurgent groups who happen to be operating in Sunni-majority areas, and whose gripes with the Iranian government have little to nothing to do with religion, but are instead usually driven by ethnic nationalist

motivations for self-determination. Arguing the morality of these dynamics is a separate and much wider issue that has little relevance to the question of religious persecution in Iran. While there's undeniably truth at some level that certain Sunnis face political repression in

Iran, this isn't aimed at the Sunni masses qua Sunnis, and in almost no case is this repression primarily religiously-motivated, but is generally due to a combination of other factors such as those outlined above.

Addendum: I didn't say it outright, but it should be obvious from the content of the thread that characterizing the introduction of Twelver Shi'a Islam as the official state religion of the Safavid dynasty as "Sunni genocide" is revisionist to the point of absurdity.

Here's a couple of sources in PDF for those interested in learning more about Safavid history:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cray1wrc2d19pt9/Newman%2C%20Andrew%20J.%20-%20Safavid%20Iran%20-%20Rebirth%20of%20a%20Persian%20Empire%20%282008%2C%20I.%20B.%20Tauris%29.pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvvvpt7gnwc601x/Momen%2C%20Moojan%20-%20An-Introduction-to-Shi-i-Islam-The-History-Doctrines-of-Twelver-Shi-ism.pdf