Last Tuesday, Germany’s ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Michael Klor-Berchtold, praised Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s quasi-parliament and a well-known denier of the Holocaust.
Writing on his official Twitter feed, Klor-Berchtold commented in English and Persian that he had a “good discussion with the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mr. Ali Larijani.”
Larijani had previously engaged in Holocaust denial when, at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, he said his country had “different perspectives on the Holocaust.” At the time, Larijani was defending former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust.
German politicians including the head of the Munich security conference Wolfgang Ischinger, declined to file criminal charges against Larijani at the time for a possible violation of Germany’s anti-Holocaust denial law. It was unclear why German officials decided not to pursue a criminal complaint.
Last Tuesday, Ambassador Klor-Berchtold also met Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an assistant to Larijani and the director general for international affairs for Iran’s parliament. Amir-Abdollahian had in February advocated the obliteration of the Jewish state.
In a press conference he stated that “the ‘Hourglass Festival’ is a symbol of the imminent collapse of the Zionist regime of Israel, as predicted by the Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
“The Islamic Republic won’t allow the Zionists to play with the security of the sensitive region of Middle East. Iran and its allies in the region, who defeated terrorists, will never allow the Zionists to endanger the region’s security,” he added.
The German tabloid BILD declared Germany’s controversial pro-Iranian ambassador the “loser of the day” for meeting with Larijani and Amir-Abdollahian. “No dialogue with Jew haters,” the publication stated.
Not only Germany’s ambassador to the Islamic Republic, but also its out-going Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is widely considered pro-Iran. He took large German business delegations to Tehran in 2015 and 2016 to revive trade deals. German exports to the Islamic Republic of Iran climbed from €2.6b. in 2016 to €3.5 billion in 2017.
Additionally, in December 2017, Germany’s foreign ministry provided aid to an alleged Iranian mass murderer Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a possible replacement as the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, who oversaw the country’s brutal justice system for a decade.
In 2017, Gabriel also welcomed an Iranian religious leader who called for the elimination of Israel to the annual al-Quds rally in Berlin. The Merkel administration opposes outlawing all of Iran’s strategic partner, Hezbollah, as a terrorist organization. According to German intelligence, there are 950 Hezbollah members in Germany who fundraise and recruit new members.
Source » jpost