He was strongly criticized after claiming that the Jews invented the Holocaust and making other statements influenced by “classic anti-Semitic ideas”, which has led to accusations of antisemitism.Ahmadinejad denied that he was an antisemite, saying that he “respects Jews very much” and that he was not “passing judgment” on the Holocaust.
Later, Ahmadinejad claimed that promoting Holocaust denial was a major achievement of his presidency; he stated that “put[ting] it forward at the global level … broke the spine of the Western capitalist regime”. The comments appeared on the Arabic but not on the English version of Fars News Agency’s website.
