NEW YORK/BRUSSELS -- World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder today asked whether the world could trust the “charm offensive” of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, again publicly questioned the Holocaust.
“When countries are rushing to welcome back a supposedly more moderate Iran into the world community and to do business with it, they should remember, it is not a new Iran, but the same Iran with a new face,” Lauder said. “Ayatollah Khamenei's words are unmistakable: he denies the Holocaust happened. Iran needs to renounce Holocaust denial, extremism, and bigotry if the world is to have any faith in its conduct and intentions. Until then, the West needs to be very careful in in engaging with Tehran.”
Khamenei on Friday questioned the existence and scale of the Holocaust, saying in remarks broadcast live from Mashhad that in Europe, "no one dares to speak of the Holocaust, the crux of which is not clear if it is true, or if it were, how it was."
"Expressing opinion about the Holocaust, or casting doubt on it, is one of the greatest sins in the West,” Khamenei said, according to a report by 'Agence France Presse'. “They prevent this, arrest the doubters, try them while claiming to be a free country," he said.
