In the fall of 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sent a promising signal of reconciliation to the Western world. Under Rouhani’s immediate predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran had hosted a global conference of Holocaust deniers, Mossad-did-9/11 conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites of the far right and far left, and other all-around kooks and haters. The newly elected Rouhani not only canceled the conference, but even publicly acknowledged that the Holocaust had in fact happened and was a bad thing. He iced the cake in September 2013 with a tweet wishing Jews worldwide a Happy Rosh Hashanah.
This year, however, the conference was reinstated—and then some.
A report from the Anti-Defamation League:
[T]he conference’s official website published the names of several American and international anti-Semites, anti-Israel activists and Holocaust deniers that are expected to be in attendance, including Maria Poumier, a French conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier; Claudio Moffa, an Italian Holocaust denier; Kevin Barrett, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and frequent contributor to Iran’s English language propaganda news network …
Iranian news agencies have reported the expected participation of … Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, the French anti-Semitic comedian and the creator of the anti-Semitic “quenelle” gesture …
The conference was opened with remarks by the personal advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mohsen Ghomi, who boasted that the conference itself is “the biggest threat to Zionists,” and that “American officials are puppets of the Zionist lobby who are taking advantage of American ignorance.”
Two former Iranian nuclear negotiators, Saeed Jalili and Ali Asghar Soltanieh, will also reportedly attend—a disturbing detail highlighted by U.S. Senator Mark Kirk. Jalili placed third in the Iranian presidential election of 2013.