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Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series examining Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the third of five podcasts on this subject. In this podcast, we begin with the pervasive theme of Holocaust denial.
Holocaust Denial
For years, the Iranian regime has used Holocaust denial to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. Ahmadinejad said that questioning the Holocaust’s truth is “taboo," which he offered as evidence that Jews conspire to conceal the truth. This is often echoed by the supreme leader. For decades, Khamenei has argued that the Holocaust was a lie crafted to validate the state of Israel. Many Iranians and some European academics argue that Jews partnered with Germans to justify the usurpation of Palestine. Iran condemns international memorial observances of the Holocaust and the respect accorded to distinguished survivors. Iranian diplomats formally protested the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Eli Wiesel, a distinguished man of letters. He became a Nobel laureate in 1986 for “being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of attacco al potere peace, atonement and dignity."
The Holocaust is a sensitive issue in Europe, and several states have criminalized Holocaust denial for fear that it resuscitates National Socialism and cleanses Germany of the crimes of the Third Reich. Nonetheless, it thrives in certain circles. There is a broad-based, right-wing European Holocaust denial that denies the uniqueness of the genocide against Jews. Some Holocaust sevilla vs espanyol denial legal cases have been sensational, such as the libel suit between historian David Irving, a Holocaust denier, and his critic Deborah Lipstadt. Irving’s books are periodically displayed in glass cabinets at exhibits in Iran, and his blog and books are cited by Iranian public intellectuals.
The authenticity and legacy of Anne Frank are frequent targets of Iranian-endorsed Holocaust deniers, such as Robert Faurisson, who attacked her diary as a forgery. Iranian media regularly promote Holocaust denial and interview the world's most renowned deniers. Ahmadinejad repeatedly asserted that the carnage of the concentration camps has been exaggerated to the point of being a myth. Leading Iranian journalists make the same claim. As with other Holocaust deniers, some Iranian intellectuals argue that Jewish bloodshed was no greater than that suffered by scotland vs nepal Germans and Japanese. One Iranian observer claimed, "We have Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the city of Larson (sic) in Germany.” Some American professors deny the Holocaust, but not many. One who has publicly sided with the Iranian regime is Arthur Butz, an engineering professor at Northwestern University, who has been interviewed by Tehran Times and Mehr. About President Ahmadinejad, he wrote, "I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state.”
A leading outlet for Iranian Holocaust denial is Tehran’s Kayhan newspaper and its elderly helmsman. Appointed directly by the supreme leader, he also directs the Kayhan Institute. Hossein Sariatmadari promotes European Holocaust deniers and Iranians such as Hassan Karbalaei, a university professor who writes for Fars and Tasnim news agencies. Shariatmadari draws on Koranic themes to support Holocaust denial and partners with the Young Journalists Club to promote this theme among young Iranians. Iranian Holocaust denial surged after the revolution and was advanced further by Ahmadinejad. He organized several international conferences and invited eminent Holocaust deniers to become regular guests on English-language Iranian television stations, notably Press TV.
Israel as a Satanic State
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei repeatedly denounces Israel’s existence. On Quds Day in 2020, he called the creation of Israel the greatest crime in recent history. He said that the "heretical doctrine" of Zionism had been invented by England and by the "Jewish masters of gold." His associates said similar things. A narrator on Iranian television claimed that Israel prevented children from playing while bombing hospitals and killing children. Israel created COVID. Khamenei endorsed the Nazi term for eliminating European Jewry – the Final Solution – and tweets often about the physical destruction of Israel. In popular culture, the anti-Israel movie Saturday Hunter teems with ominous motifs. In the film, a boy is brainwashed by his rabbi grandfather into becoming
