Paper of Iran’s leader accuses Germany of terrorism in antisemitic tirade

“Holocaust was a fraud,” screams Khamenei paper

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
HEZBOLLAH FLAGS flutter along an empty street, at the entrance of Mays Al-Jabal village (photo credit: SETH J. FRANTZMAN)
HEZBOLLAH FLAGS flutter along an empty street, at the entrance of Mays Al-Jabal village
(photo credit: SETH J. FRANTZMAN)
BERLIN – The main propaganda newspaper for the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran published antisemitic articles attacking Germany for its ban of the Lebanese terrorist movement Hezbollah, including accusing the federal republic of support for terrorism.
The Iranian-regime controlled Daily Kayhan published an article titled “Germany blacklisted Hezbollah out of fear” on Saturday citing  a commentary from the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Hussein Shariatmadari, who wrote: Berlin is effectively "in rent for the Zionists.”
He added that "We have to tell the German government and Chancellor Angela Merkel that blacklisting Lebanon’s Hezbollah is an order dictated to you from Israel and not a decision you have taken independently.”
The Daily Kayhan is widely considered the news outlet that mirrors the views of the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The Daily Kayhan wrote: “Chief editor of the Kayhan newspaper Hussein Shariatmadari ridiculed the German government’s excuses for blacklisting Hezbollah.”
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said according to the Daily Kayhan that Germany outlawed Hezbollah because it is afraid of the "child-killing” Israel.
Shamkhani tweeted that "Sellers of chemical weapons to Saddam have become human rights defenders, out of fear of their child-killing friend, [and] called Hezbollah, terrorist.”
Kayhan wrote that “The tweet made a reference to the 1980-1988 imposed war against Iran, when Germany was among the countries providing Saddam Hussein with substances needed to build chemical weapons which the former Iraqi dictators indiscriminately used against Iranian civilians and troops.”
The veteran Iranian journalist and expert on the Islamic Republic, Amir Taheri, tweeted:
"Daily Kayhan, expressing Khamenei's views, attacks Germany for imposing ban on Hezbollah. 'With 100 Jewish members, the German Parliament is controlled by Zionists,' it says. 'German people begin to resent their govt. working for Israel. They now know Holocaust was a fraud.'"

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Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the Daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979 before the paper was seized by Islamic revolutionaries.
Taheri tweeted that “Germany's decision to ban Hezbollah seems first step to total ban by all 27 members of European Union. German argument is that it makes no sense to ban the armed wing but allow its controller,the political wing, to operate. It's like banning the puppet but not puppeteer.”
He added that  “If, as Germans say, Hezbollah's political wing is puppet master with military wing as puppet, don't forget there is an even bigger puppet master: Islamic Republic in Iran. Although a novice, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas must know without cash from Iran there would be no Hezbollah.”
Taheri, widely considered one of the world’s leading experts on the Middle East, tweeted “Imposing ban on Hezbollah by EU would be gesture of solidarity with Lebanon Protests against a corrupt govt. that has led it to the edge of precipice. Hezbollah's invocation of religious freedom is spurious. Hostage-taking, rocket & bomb attacks on civilians isn't religion.”
The European Union merely banned Hezbollah’s so-called “military wing” in 2013 after Hezbollah operatives blew up an Israeli tour bus in Bulgaria, murdering five Israelis and their Bulgarian Muslim bus driver. Hezbollah’s leaders state their movement is a unitary organization without wings.
Germany's government outlawed all Hezbollah activities within its borders on Thursday.
Iran’s regime is Hezbollah’s chief financial sponsor. US administrations – the respective administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for example – have classified Iran’s regime the worst state-sponsor of international terrorism.
In January, US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Elan Carr stated that Iran is the "world’s chief trafficker in antisemitism" and that "antisemitism isn’t ancillary to the ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a central foundational component of the ideology of that regime, and we have to be clear about it, and we have to confront it and call it out for what it is.”