Nadene Goldfoot
Persia became a factor in Jewish history because of the conquest of the Babylonian Empire by Cyrus in 538 BCE. (Persian identity refers to the Indo-European Aryans who arrived in Iran about 4 thousand years ago (kya). Originally they were nomadic, pastoral people inhabiting the western Iranian plateau.
From the province of Fars they spread their language and culture to the other parts of the Iranian plateau absorbing local Iranian and non-Iranian groups. This process of assimilation continued also during the Greek, Mongol, Turkish and Arab invasions. Ancient Persian people were firstly characterized by the Zoroastrianism. After the Islamization, Shi'a became the main doctrine of all Iranian people.)
Sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple
For the next 2 centuries both of the 2 groups of Jews; the 650,000 of the Exile in Mesopotamia and in the homeland of Eretz Yisrael were under Persian rule. It was under Persian auspices that there took place the return from exile in Babylonia to Jerusalem which continued to be a Persian province with some degree of local autonomy.
Esther saving the lives of all the Jews in the Empire from Haman's decree
Haman was the chief minister to the King, Esther's husband. Mordecai of the tribe of Benjamin, Ether's uncle, a palace official was disliked by Haman because Mordecai didn't bow to Haman. Being jealous of the Jewish people, he made an order for all people to attack and kill the Jew. Esther heard about it and told her husband the king, and he put an end to it; with Haman and his sons hanging by the neck. To remember this near Holocaust, we celebrate joyously with Purim, a happy holiday.
The political unity of the Middle East under Persian rule caused considerable movements of population from one part of this area to another. The Book of Esther in the Bible envisages Jews living throughout the 127 Provinces of the Persian Empire and depicts them as numerous and influential in the capital of Susa (Shushan). When the story in the bible happened is not exactly clear. We do know that from the 4th century BCE onward, Jews lived in considerable numbers in Persia's main part of the country.
Little is known, however, when Parthia controlled the Persian holdings. Parthia was an empire of Iranic people. They flourished from the 3rd century BCE to 226 CE and ruled over the vast mass of the Jewish population in Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Media. the Parthians restored Antigonus Mattathias to the throne of Judah in 40 BCE. The Jews of the Roman empire looked on Parthia as their future savior; in Parthia itself, the Jews enjoyed considerable autonomy under the exilarch. It was under the rule of Parthia that the famous rabbinic schools in Mesopotamia began to flourish.
From 250 BCE onward, Persia resumed its existence as a state in 225 CE under the Sassanid Dynasty, its authority again extending over the ancient centers of intensive Jewish settlement in Mesopotamia.
The Babylonian Talmud, which was written here under Persian rule, evidences a vigorous Jewish life in Persia proper, and the Persian queen, Shushan Dukht, was of Jewish birth, like our Queen Esther had been.
The conditions of living under Persians was favorable at first, there were later fierce religious persecution under Zoroastrian influence culminating in the attempt to suppress Jewish observances under Yerdgerd III from 438 to 457. (Zoroastrians are the oldest religious community in Iran; started by Zoroaster in ?th cent. BCE), the prophet of ancient Persia. In fact, the first followers have been the proto-Indo-Iranians. With the Islamic invasions, they were persecuted and now exist as a minority in Iran). Their belief is in light and rightousness and its actively ethical character of commendation of marriage and agriculture, turning the earth from a waste into G'd's kingdom, bear some resemblance to Judaism which rejected its dualism. It was Isaiah (45:7) who said, "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I am the Lord, that doeth all these things."
There was an even more sweeping persecution in 468 under Firuz from 459 to 486 after the alleged murder of 2 magi by the Jews in the capital, Isfahan, which was a city reputedly of Jewish foundation. When Kavadh I from 485 to 531 adopted and endeavored to impose the communistic practices of Zendicism, the Persian Jews joined in the revolt led by the exilarch, MAR ZUTRA II in 513 to 520.
The Arab conquest occurred in 641/642 introduced a new, generally tolerant spirit, with certain reservations. The Jews of Persia flourished under the Eastern Caliphate of Baghdad; they were controlled by the exilarchs and paid intellectual allegiance to the Gaonim Jews whose influence was strong.
Persia was, at this period, a nursery of sectarian movements. One was that of Abu Issa al-Isfahani in 700. Consequently, Karaism obtained a vigorous hold in Persia from the 8th century, and some of its most influential teachers, such as Benjamin Nahavendi, came from there. Karaites were a Jewish sect that rejected the Oral Law. It originated in the 8th century in and around Persia where the Jewish community was not long established and did not accept the discipline of the Babylonian gaonate (intellectual leaders, often holding power as well around 11th century, heads of the academy. 
Jewish historian, Benjamin of Tudela of northern Spain, toward the end of the 12th century, found by walking, starting in 1165 CE and returning in 1172/3, who visited Jewish communities throughout Europe and throughout this area, numerous and flourishing Jewish communities, which had recently been disturbed through the messianic movement of Menahem ben Solomon AKA David Alroy. In 1121, mountain Jews in NE Caucasia, started this movement at the start of an invasion of the nomadic Kipchaks from the steppes of the Black Sea. The Jews had been suffering and poverty-stricken, and there was the possibility of conquering Palestine after the Crusades left. Alroy's father led it at first. Alroy was physically and intellectually outstanding, and was proclaimed Messiah. He had to fight, and was defeated right away. He transferred the center of the revolt to the mountains of Kurdistan, aiming to hold the city of Amadia but was killed by a secret assassins (maybe his father-in-law) in 1135. Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel about him in THE WONDEROUS TALE OF DAVID ALROY.
Mongol rule came along next, during which the lot of the Jews was checkered from the 13th to 15th centuries.
In other parts of the world, in 1492, the Pope instigated the Spanish Inquisition where Jews were told to leave Spain or convert to Catholicism. Many fled to Portugal, and other places.
Persian independence was reasserted in 1499 under the Safavid dynasty. The Shiite form of Islam, from then on, generally was the dominant and highly intolerant in theory and practice. The Jews were treated worse than in other parts of the Moslem world, all manner of restrictions being enforced, and in the 17th century, there were widespread persecutions and forced conversions, particularly in Isfahan.
Conditions improved temporarily under the broadminded Nadir Shah (1736-1747) who aimed at creating a new religious synthesis. He was responsible for settling a Jewish community in his new capital, Meshed, where Jews had been excluded earlier. Upon his death, a reaction followed, and shiite intolerance again became supreme. Despite this, throughout this period, a fairly vigorous intellectual life persisted, partly showing up in their literature in the Judeo-Persian Dialect. The old Persian prayer-book of the Jews, based on Saadyah's ritual, was still current, until in the early 19th century. Then it was superseded by the Sephardi rite through the influence of visiting Palestinian Jewish scholars. 
Medieval conditions of intolerance continued in Persia, and in 1839, the entire Meshed community was forcibly converted to Islam, though retaining secret fidelity to Judaism, now known as Jedid al-Islam. In this 19th century, Persian Jewry was among the most depressed of the world's Jewish communities, notwithstanding the diplomatic interventions occasionally secured by Western Jewry, and intermittent promises of ameliorations by successive shahs were overlooked.
From 1898, schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle did something to introduce a more modern spirit, but progress was slight and the Jedid al-Islam did not dare to return openly to Judaism. Although equality of political rights ws nominally introduced into Persia under the Shah, the social and economic status of the Jews changed little.
In the 1960's and 1970's, many Jews moved from the provinces to Teheran. Jews began to emigrate in numbers after 1948's birth of Israel.
Although the Jews were not persecuted after the Khomeini revolution in 1978, so they say; and I know that Jews were too frightened to say so openly, as my cousin's husband escaped from Iran when a teenager on camels with other teens, many felt uncomfortable under the strict Islamic regime and left for Israel and the west. The teen survived and is a doctor, married to my cousin and lives on the east coast of the USA. Their numbers fell from 80,000 in 1978 to 20,000 in 1989.
All throughout the ages, there was opportunity for a mixing of the peoples of Jews and Persians. Cyrus himself was said to be the son of Queen Esther and her husband, the king Ahasueros (in Farsi or Hebrew). DNA testing will disclose any relationship, or certainly will in the future.
"Family Tree DNA in Houston has a nice group of Jewish Persian families carrying the haplogroups mostly of J, and R and E and a few with I, C, T, and G. This project is about the Jewish diaspora of Iran spanning from the time of Cyrus the Great and the freedom of the Jewish people from Babylonian exile to present day. Other Jewish groups post the Babylonian exile moved in an out of what is now modern day Iran and have left their genetic footprint on the population."
Iranians testing just might find a few segments of Jewish genes, you would think, but perhaps not. They've been treated as an isolated group that was not to mix in, unlike Russians had experienced. .
Jewish genetic disorders
In addition to having shared a religion, a cultural heritage, an oral tradition and a written language, Jews also share a common gene pool, dating back to their common origins more than 5700 years ago. Although the frequency of genetic diseases in general is no greater in Jews than in any other ethnic group, this shared genetic background has resulted in certain hereditary diseases occurring at a higher frequency in individuals of Jewish ancestry.2
" Israeli investigators have identified several relatively frequent disorders due to founder point mutations in Persian (Iranian) Jews, who, for nearly three centuries up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, were completely isolated reproductively."
Because of the historical migrations of Jews out of Israel over the millennia and the subsequent centuries long geographic separation of segments of the Jewish community, there are disorders that are more common among certain subgroups within the Jewish community, such as Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Persian Jews, and others. Some of these diseases, such as Tay-Sachs disease (TSD), Canavan disease, and familial dysautonomia, are relatively common among Jewish individuals of eastern and central European ancestry (Ashkenazim). Similarly, there are disorders that are more common among other branches of the Jewish people, such as familial Mediterranean fever and beta-thalassemia in Mediterranean/Iberian-derived (Sephardic) Jews and 
inclusion body myopathy in Persian/Iranian (Mizrahi) Jews. Inclusion body myopathy 2 is a condition that primarily affects skeletal muscles, which are muscles that the body uses for movement. This disorder causes muscle weakness that appears in late adolescence or early adulthood and worsens over time.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.nature.com/articles/gim2010105
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0041252
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcugV6vgDU
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/inclusion-body-myopathy-2/
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/jewish-persian-dna/about
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008385
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