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Iran Ramps Up Anti-Israel Campaign

The Islamic Republic of Iran announced plans this past Sunday for a conference to examine evidence for the Holocaust, a new step in hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s campaign against Israel, and one that was likely to deepen Tehran`s international isolation. Mr. Ahmadinejad has already called the World War II slaughter of European Jews by the Nazis a "myth", and has said the Jewish state should be wiped off the map, or moved to Germany or the United States.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. organization that monitors nuclear proliferation, said Iran was resuming small-scale nuclear enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for atomic bombs. Tehran had further raised international concern about its nuclear program last week when it announced it was resuming what it called "research" at its uranium enrichment facility.

President Ahmadinejad has adopted rhetoric reminiscent of the late Khomeini, seemingly trying to breath life back into the waning revolutionary spirit of the country, whose residents are not traditionally anti-Jewish. The Jewish state and Iran had good relations until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, lead by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Israel had backed the shah. Before the Islamic Revolution, about 100,000 Jews lived in Iran, but three-fourths of them fled during the upheaval.