Ahmadinejad: More Jewish roots surface

Claims have resurfaced about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s possible Jewish heritage. 

A close-up of Mr Ahmadinejad holding up his identity card has been released, showing that the Iranian President’s previous name was Saburjian.

The Jewish Chronicle reported in July that Iranian blogger Dr Mehdi Khazali was detained after writing on his website earlier this year for writing about the name change from Saburjian, a name thought to be Jewish in origin.

The name is thought to derive from “weaver of the Sabour”, the word for a tallit in Persian and the name is on the list of Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

The family is thought to have changed their name to Ahmadinejad after converting to Islam.

During the election campaign, reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi also challenged Ahmadinejad in a live TV debate to give his full name.

Experts on Iran were sceptical about the claims when they first surfaced. continues here

EDITOR'S Comment: They keep trying don’t they ,go against them and everything and anything is used to disparage, discredit or ridicule ,be that by lying, smear or operation…

Germany Will Walk Out of U.N. if Ahmadinejad Denies Holocaust

Germany's foreign ministry is sending a clear message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ahead of his Wednesday speech to the United Nations — don't deny the Holocaust.

If the rogue Iranian leaders does in fact make such a statement before the General Assembly, German diplomats will walk out. And Germany wants other European Union countries to follow, the foreign ministry was quoted by Reuters.

"We will leave the hall if President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust or makes anti-Semitic statements ... we are making efforts towards a unified European position," a spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.

As recently as last week, Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a lie, repeating the inflammatory statement as world powers weigh how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Stating that the Holocaust did not occur during World War Two is a crime in Germany. continues here

'Israel plotted Ahmadinejad killing'

Israel planned to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the country's elections last month, Teheran's Intelligence Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei claimed Friday.

Mohseni-Ejei told the state-run Fars news Agency that Israel, collaborating with Iranian Mujahedeen opposition members, met in Egypt and France to plan Ahmadinejad's killing.

"The Zionist leadership met with members of the opposition near Sharm e-Sheikh in Egypt and also met with them in Paris in order to plan the assassination of Ahmadinejad," Mohseni-Ejei insisted.

"Opposition members set several conditions for the implementation of this mission and asked that the US and other factors remove the organization's name from its list of terror groups.continues here

UN 'regrets' Ahmadinejad speech

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "misused" an anti-racism conference at which he called Israel a racist state.

The Iranian president's speech sparked wide condemnation and a walkout by EU delegates. Iran criticised Mr Ban's comments as "one-sided".

The UN said Mr Ahmadinejad had dropped language from his speech describing the Holocaust as "ambiguous and dubious".

Meanwhile, conference delegates adopted a resolution against racism.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said the declaration, which also covered issues such as xenophobia and intolerance, was an answer to Mr Ahmadinejad's tirade.

She said the document included a line stating that "the Holocaust must never be forgotten," and that Iran, as a participating state, had signed up to it.

But the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the controversy surrounding the Iranian president's comments turned what should have been a shining example of the UN at its best into a bitter and divisive farce.

'Very regretful'

The original text of Mr Ahmadinejad's speech said that after World War II, Western nations had "resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless, on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of Holocaust".

But UN officials said the Iranian president had dropped the terms "ambiguous and dubious", speaking instead of "exploiting the Holocaust".

Related Content

1. Ahmadinejad speech: full text
2. Iran: Ahmadinejad welcomed home
3. US boycotts UN racism conference

Nevertheless, during a trip to Malta on Tuesday, Mr Ban said it was "very regretful that the conference was misused by the Iranian president for political purposes".

"Before the speech I had a long bilateral meeting with President Ahmadinejad and urged him to give a balanced and constructive contribution to the conference because he was the only head of state present," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Mr Ahmadinejad spoke on Monday at the start of the five-day UN conference in Geneva.

Jewish migrants, he said, had been sent from Europe and the US after World War II "in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine".

Applause

He continued: "And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine."

His comments prompted a walkout by delegates from at least 30 countries, and a raft of condemnation from Western officials.

Diplomats who remained, however, applauded as Mr Ahmadinejad continued his address.

Some countries, including the US and Israel, had boycotted the conference because the Iranian president was appearing.

On Tuesday US President Barack Obama said that the kind of rhetoric Mr Ahmadinejad had used was "harmful" to Iran's relations with the US and its position in the world.

But he also said the US would "continue to pursue the possibility of improved relations and a resolution to some of the critical issues in which there have been differences - particularly around the nuclear issue".

Earlier, Mr Ban had expressed dismay at both the boycotts and Mr Ahmadinejad's speech.

He said the speech had been used "to accuse, divide and even incite".

Iranian state TV quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying that Mr Ban's comments "displayed a one-sided and unreasonable approach".

Mr Ahmadinejad returned home on Tuesday to what was officially described as a "sensational" welcome.continues here

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Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ‘could be kidnapped by Mossad’

Israel’s secret service could abduct Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s virulently anti-Israeli president, and deliver him to the International Criminal Court to face charges of incitement to genocide, one of the Jewish state’s most renowned former agents has suggested. 

Rafi Eitan, a top former Mossad operative who oversaw the abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, said the spy organisation could mete out similar treatment to the Iranian leader, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” in the past, and who is currently suspected by Israel of developing a nuclear arsenal. 

Now holding a post in the country’s security cabinet, the 81-year-old said that, while the days of hunting down Nazis may be over, the same tactics could be maintained for the Jewish state’s current worst enemies. 

"It could very well be that a leader such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suddenly finds himself before the International Criminal Court in The Hague," Mr Eitan, who is currently minister for pensioners' affairs, told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine. 

Asked if kidnapping was acceptable, Mr Eitan said, “Yes. Any way to bring him for trial in The Hague is a possibility…Those who spread poison and want to eradicate another people have to expect such consequences.” 

Mr Eitan headed the Mossad team that tracked down Eichmann, one of the main engineers of the Nazi regime’s genocide against European Jewry, and arranged for him to be kidnapped from his hideout in Argentina and secretly brought to Israel, where he was tried and hanged. 

He revealed last week that his Mossad team had concentrated their hunt on Eichmann even though news of his capture allowed the equally notorious Josef Mengele, a doctor who carried out murderous experiments on live inmates in the Auschwitz death camp, to get away. 

Israel has repeatedly warned that it has not ruled any measure out in dealing with a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, and in recent months has carried out practice bombing runs to weigh the possibility of a strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, as it did against Saddam Hussein’s fledgling nuclear plant almost 30 years ago. 

Almost a year ago, Israeli bombers unexpectedly struck a suspect site in Syria, which is closely allied to Iran, blowing up a site without ever identifying exactly what had been destroyed. Speculation was rife that it had been a chemical or nuclear facility linked either to Iran or North Korea, although no proof was ever offered for either thesis. continues here