Such information would be relevant. The real trick would be to keep such a paragraph short and to the point. As such the question would be a good draft of such a section. I have two comments:

I would not start the second sentence with "as you know". If a committee member did not know, you make her or him feel ignorant. It is good to avoid invoking negative emotions in such a letter. Especially since leaving that part out does not change the meaning of the sentence.

It was not clear from the text whether it was the Bahai faith that prohibited it's members from going to university or whether it was the Iranian government that prohibited people with the Bahai religion to enter university.

我希望scaaahu可以在評論中回答該評論，以便我可以對其進行投票。

也許它可以幫助您了解我開始了博士學位。當時年僅56歲。它沒有進入前十名大學，但我也不為自己的母校感到羞恥。招生委員會對研究和教學的潛力感興趣。顯示這些內容，並在您的背景下獲得報價。

在scaaahu所建議的求職信或目的陳述中，請務必提供非常簡短的解釋。它不必像您在此處發布的內容那樣廣泛。只需向正在思考的委員會成員講話，“我想知道為什麼……？”簡單地說：“我的信徒不允許在我的祖國伊朗上大學，所以我起步較晚。”

我建議您將您提供給我們的信息放入博士學位申請的目的聲明中。至少對於美國式的目的聲明（通常為兩頁左右），我不建議簡述您告訴我們的故事。相反，我同意@scaaahu的觀點，您的故事極具說服力，遠比通常在此類陳述中閱讀的故事更令人信服。在多年的逆境中取得了學術上的成功：這真棒。如果我在我的程序（數學，UGA）的博士學位申請中看到了這一點，那麼我將通過您的聲明，供整個招生委員會閱讀。如果您的申請書的其他部分具有相當的競爭力，那麼我會竭盡全力地爭取您的錄取。您有很多值得驕傲的地方，並且肯定會激發許多其他人的靈感。學術界需要像你這樣的人。

DEFINITELY include information on what you describe. More importantly, though, you are a more mature student, and at your age you should show a very solid understanding of why you need a PhD to pursue your career goals.

"Atypical" students can be great additions for departments, but if I were the one doing the choosing, I would be looking for more than your history, academic or otherwise -- I'd be looking to see whether you understand why you want the degree, and what you intend to do with it. Give your admissions committee your whole picture.

There are some people that probably should "dodge" this issue. You are NOT one of them. So an explanation will help you, with very little risk.

You come from what most Western institutions would consider a "disadvantaged" background. You have succeeded in spite of that fact. You got a later start in university life because you got a lot of life experience in what we Americans would call "the school of hard knocks." That's very much to your credit. Most western universities would give a positive weight to "maturity" and sense of purpose in evaluating an application. You have both.

The kind of person who might have something to fear regarding age is someone from a (probably) rich family who had a "wasted" (or misspent) youth. You are not that person.