Eurasia Press & News
On International Qods Day, marked by the Iranian regime this year on March 28, 2025,[1] Ayatollah Ahmad Alam Al-Hoda, Friday prayer imam for the city of Mashhad and representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Khorasan Razavi province, and a member of the Assembly of Experts that is tasked with selecting Iran’s supreme leader, gave a speech at the Imam Reza mosque in Mashhad. In his speech, he denied the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe, saying that “all the stories about the Holocaust are a complete lie” and that “a Western researcher even proved this.” Alam Al-Hoda explained also that “England invented the [idea of the] Holocaust in order to compensate the Jews for the injustice done them in World War [II]” – meaning that since the British had circulated this fake Holocaust story, they then had to make it up to the Jews for the alleged atrocities against them by giving them Palestine.
It should be noted that denying the Holocaust, or attempting to downplay its atrocities or minimize the number of victims in it, are a recurring theme in Iranian regime officials’ speeches and declarations, and are a consistent part of the regime’s official discourse (see Appendix of MEMRI reports).
In his speech, Alam Al-Hoda continued to advance the discourse about eliminating the Jewish state, Israel, in accordance with Iranian regime policy, and reviewed the regime’s activity to accomplish this. He praised the establishment of International Qods Day by the founder of Iran’s revolutionary regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which, he said, had created “a global Islamic movement to tackle the cancerous growth Israel.” He went on to stress that the “resistance front” – the Iranian regime’s term for the network of its proxy terror organizations across the region, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, that carried out Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Iran’s term for the Hamas October 7 attack on southern Israel – is a result of International Qods Day and even credited the spread of Islam in the West to the idea of the Iranian resistance.
The following are the main points of Ayatollah Alam Al-Hoda’s International Qods Day speech:
“The Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution] knew that after a full month of fasting [Ramadan], the people deserved to be close to God and to plan for the revelation of the Hidden Imam [the Mahdi, the Shi’ite messiah]. According to tradition, Issa [the Islamic name for Jesus] will descend from the heavens and pray in Jerusalem behind the Hidden I Zaman. Jerusalem is the place where the Imam will appear, to spread justice in the world, and the cry of liberating Jerusalem on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan constitutes preparation for his appearance.
“During World War II, when the Allies defeated Hitler and Germany, they [the Allies] tried to create an ideology by means of which they could formulate military and political plans in the Middle East region. This was with the understanding that the era of Queen Victoria’s reign some 250 [sic] years ago, with England’s control of India, began the process of exploitation of the East, and the West sought to gain control of the entire world by dominating the Middle East.
“England found a solution for dominating the Middle East by expelling Islam from this region. Therefore, it invented the idea of the Holocaust, [and] in order to compensate the Jews for the [alleged] injustice done them in this matter, allocated to them the land of Palestine, which it considered the land promised to the Jews. There it established the first Jewish state, in order to compensate the Jews for the suffering and damage that they had experienced in the Holocaust in Germany. This is despite the fact that all the stories about the Holocaust are a complete lie, and a Western researcher even proved this.
“It was through this plan that British colonialism stole the homes, gardens, and property of the Palestinians, began to build inside the land of Palestine, and gradually established the illegitimate State of Israel. In fact, they [the British] saw the establishment of Israel as compensation for the injustices done to the Jewish people [during World War II]. Had there been at that time calls of protest from the Islamic countries, Israel would never have been able to control Palestine.
“Imam Khomeini was, thanks to his keen thinking, the first to recognize this [British] ideology [to dominate the Islamic region], and with his launch of [International] Qods Day, he sought to start in the Islamic world a movement to confront the cancerous tumor of Israel in the region. However, in those days, no one saw the Palestinian people as an oppressed people, and some in the circles of [Iranian] politicians infected with Western influence even argued, ‘If we call ‘Death to Israel’ in the streets, will Israel [actually] be destroyed?’
“Forty-seven years have passed since then, and today, the situation has gotten to the point where the call of ‘death to Israel’ echoes across the world, even in the streets of New York, and it is no longer limited to the streets of Iran alone.
“Those who wanted the war to not take place inside Israel but outside it see today with their own eyes how, in [Operations] True Promise 1 and 2 [Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Israel in 2024], Israel was shelled with missiles within its own territory.
“Forty-seven years ago, the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem was a domestic matter inside Palestine. But today, Palestine is a global issue, and the whole world recognizes the injustice done to this [Palestinian] country. The voices of the peoples of the world are raised against the oppression of this [Palestinian] people, and their emotions are aimed toward the distress of Palestine and their loathing for Israel. Today, no entity in the entire world is more hated and more defiled than Israel. America too could not have failed more drastically than it has [in this matter], because today the whole world sees America as an oppressive, dictatorial, and criminal [entity], and not one nation with a positive view of it can be found.
“Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ destroyed America’s honor in the world. The resistance front is the fruit of Qods Day! America thinks that by threatening Iran and bombing Yemen it will be able to eradicate the resistance front – while resistance is an indestructible idea that has united all the Islamic countries, even those whose leaders are mercenaries of the ‘arrogance’ [the Iranian regime’s term for the U.S.].
“Today, the Holy Quran has gained supporters in the West, and Islam – which is rooted in the idea of resistance – is now taking over the Western world. This resistance will not be extinguished by bombing Yemen or by mindless threats from a madman ([President Donald] Trump) on paper [referring to a recent letter from President Trump to Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei]. Only the Imam [Khomeini] himself could have predicted, on the day he set Qods Day [as the fourth Friday of Ramadan], what the results of this day in the world would be…”[2]
Appendix: Holocaust Denial By The Iranian Regime
The following are some MEMRI reports and clips of Holocaust denial over the years by the Iranian regime:
