Smith’s Report, no. 135

The “Battle for the Campus” Goes to Teheran

Bradley Smith

The “Holocaust” Conference in Tehran was significant for three primary reasons, in my view. In the first place, the fact that it happened and that it was sponsored by the foreign ministry of a Nation State. Secondly, because the State that sponsored it is “evil,” and fronted by a Hitlerian-like demon, it appears to have forced other State lead-ers around the world, and particularly in the West, to condemn it with a ferocity that ap-proached insanity, giving the event world-wide publicity that it would not have gotten otherwise. And thirdly, and perhaps the development that will prove to be the most im-portant, a provisional committee of Western revisionists was formed, sponsored by an office of the Foreign Ministry of Iran, to consider ways to “take the show on the road.”

The Conference itself was organized by the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), an office of the Foreign Ministry of Iran. It consisted of an opening session, then three sessions of talks the first day, and three the next, each with several speakers.

On the first day, 11 December, we were transported from the Ministry guest house (three six- and eight-story apartment buildings) by small buses and several autos the two miles or so up hill to the In-stitute. It had snowed the previous days and there was snow on the ground in the trees. The Institute itself was the grandest site for a revisionist conference that I have yet seen. The moment I entered the large lobby two young men came up to me and introduced themselves. They recognized me from my mug shot on CODOHWeb. They were college age. Over the next two days maybe a dozen young men and women came up to introduce themselves, say they recognized me from CODOHWeb. I realized later that all were in the mid-twenties or younger. Not one appeared to have reached their thirtieth year. The opening session of the conference was chaired by Dr. Manouchehr Mohammadi, Deputy For-eign Minister for Education and Research, Iran. When I had occasion to talk to him later, I discovered his manners were as simple, good-humored, and elegant as his presence at the podium. The session comprised the playing of the anthem of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a recitation from the Quran…

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