Iran and the Holocaust

In its continuous confrontation with the West, Iran is calling for the organisation of a conference to debate whether the Holocaust has really happened.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been issuing highly inflammatory comments on Israel and the Holocaust in conjunction with the country's deepening confrontation with the West over its nuclear activities.

Teheran claims that efforts to expand its nuclear programme are intended to increase its electricity generation capacity. The EU and the United States do not believe this.

They think that Teheran is not complying with its international commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and that its real intention is to build atomic weapons.

This programme will alter the regional balance of power, but hold your breath a moment longer: Iran is also developing missile technology which will shortly place most of the EU within its range.

So it becomes even more alarming when Iran begins to make other statements, such as the ones casting doubts on the Holocaust. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying that the time has come for Western leaders to hear comments not to their liking.

According to the official Iranian news agency IRNA, Asefi said: "For over half a century, those who seek to prove the Holocaust have used every podium to defend their position. Now they should listen to others."

President Ahmadinejad had already called the Nazis' World War II slaughter of six million European Jews a "myth" and said the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map".

He also said that, if the Holocaust did happen, then Israel should be moved to Germany or North America, rather than punishing the Palestinians, who lost their land in the name of what he called crimes committed by Europeans.

What President Ahmadinejad failed to say was that millions more Americans and Europeans spilled their blood to defeat the perpetrators of the Holocaust and their allies. Having defeated them, the Americans and most Europeans went on to strengthen their democracies as well as the unity of Europe so that such things would not happen again.

It was a minority of Europeans who wanted the Holocaust and an absolute majority of them who opposed it. We wish we could pass similar judgments on other people's record in their struggle for freedom.

Statements such as the ones made by President Ahmadinejad not only heighten the chances of confrontation but push middle-of-the-road public opinion in Europe and America more towards the proposal of a showdown with Iran.

The EU must make it clear that any "academic", "specialist" or plain misfit who takes part in the Iranian conference on the Holocaust - if it ever happens - must be made to answer with the greatest scientific rigour for any allegations which he makes.

By attacking the historic truth of the Holocaust, Iran is tearing the soul of Europe, the land of the free, which came into being precisely as a result of the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism.