TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raised the stakes against Israel on Friday and called the Holocaust a lie, just as world powers try to decide how to deal with the nuclear ambitions of an Iran in political turmoil.
“The pretext for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim,” he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel “Quds (Jerusalem) Day” rally.
“Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty.” Ahmadinejad’s anti-Western comments on the Holocaust have caused international outcry and isolated Iran, which is at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear program.
Britain was swift in condemning Ahmadinejad’s remarks, calling them “abhorrent as well as ignorant.”
“It is very important that the world community stands up against this tide of abuse. This outburst is not worthy of the leader of Iran,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, defended Ahmadinejad and said he was criticized for supporting “the ‘resistance’, the people of the region and Palestine.”
“Our belief and creed ... remain that Israel is an illegal entity, a cancerous tumor, that must cease to exist,” he said in a televised address.
Ahmadinejad’s fresh comments came ahead of his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly next week and before Tehran attends talks on Oct. 1 with major powers worried about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear strategy.
Western powers are concerned by what they have called Tehran’s defiance and “point-blank refusal” to suspend uranium enrichment and address the issue as demanded by UN Security Council resolutions since 2006.
Next month’s major powers talks with Iran offer no clear relief to Israel, which wants world powers to be prepared to penalize Iran’s vulnerable energy imports but sees Russia and China blocking any such resolution at the UN Security Council.
