President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has raised the stakes against Israel by describing the Holocaust as a lie, just as world powers are trying to decide how to deal with the nuclear ambitions of an Iran in political turmoil.
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false … It is a lie based on an un-provable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel "Quds (Jerusalem) Day" rally.
"Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty."
The White House condemned Friday as "ignorant and hateful" comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust and warned they would only isolate Iran further.
"Regardless that we’ve heard that type of rhetoric before, obviously we condemn what he said, and I would point to what the president (Barack Obama) said in Cairo: denying the Holocaust is baseless, ignorant and hateful," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
"Promoting those vicious lies serves only to isolate Iran further from the world," he said.
Anti-Israeli speeches
Ahmadinejad’s anti-Western speeches and comments on the Holocaust have in the past caused an international outcry and isolated Iran which is at loggerheads with the West over its disputed nuclear program.
The hardline president warned leaders of Western-allied Arab and Muslim countries about dealing with Israel.
"This regime (Israel) will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it … This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end," he said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.
Britain was swift in condemning Ahmadinejad’s remarks, calling them "abhorrent as well as ignorant."
"It is very important that the world community stands up against this tide of abuse. This outburst is not worthy of the leader of Iran," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust, calling him a disgrace to his country.
In a statement Steinmeier said: "Today’s statements by the Iranian President are unacceptable. With his intolerable tirades he is a disgrace to his country. This sheer anti-Semitism demands our collective condemnation. We will continue to confront it decisively in the future."
Steinmeier’s condemnation was unprecedented in its tone.
Denying the Holocaust — carried out by Nazi Germany in World War Two — is a crime in Germany, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Talks with major powers
Ahmadinejad’s fresh comments came ahead of his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly next week and before Tehran attends talks on Oct. 1 with major powers worried about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear strategy.
Western powers are concerned by what they have called Tehran’s defiance and "point-blank refusal" to suspend uranium enrichment and address the issue as demanded by U.N. Security Council resolutions since 2006.
Instead of directly addressing those demands, Iran handed world powers this month a proposal that spoke generally of talks on political, security, international and economic issues but was silent on its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad repeated on Thursday that Iran would "never" abandon its disputed nuclear program to appease Western critics.
The major powers suspect Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a cover for developing nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly said it is enriching uranium only to generate electricity, not for fissile bomb material, although it has no nuclear power plants to use low-level enriched uranium.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who came into office pledging a policy of engagement toward Iran, has suggested Iran may face harsher international sanctions, possibly targeting its imports of gasoline, if it does not accept good-faith talks by the end of September.
Iran, the world’s fifth-biggest crude producer, is seen as vulnerable to oil sanctions because it imports 40 percent of its gasoline to supply the cheap fuel Iranians see as a birthright.