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I provided a link to a NY Times article that says American/Israeli gov't are allegedly deliberately attempting to lure Iran scientists to defect (supposedly called Project Braindrain).
If true, that's at least evidence that certain scientists are indeed under the spotlight of foreign powers.
It's already true that Iran suffers from massive natural braindrain. Wikipedia said as many as ~150,000 Iranians leave every year, ~25% with post-secondary educations. The reasons given are because of the "tight job market" and "strict social codes imposed by the Islamic government."
There was a pretty important scientist who apparently defected to the U.S not to long ago and Iran called it a kidnapping. Not sure which is more likely since the man had been working in Iran his entire life.
There is undeniably a correlation between more education and less religiosity worldwide, so the extreme social conservatism of Islamic countries may contribute to a lot of their own brain drain.
Correlation does not mean causation and Iran has a large percentage of its youth that attend secondary education. If I remember correctly something like 60% of all students were women so it manages to include both genders as well, though you may say in spite of religion.