“For 60 years, talking about the Holocaust was a crime in the West, but now there is a serious debate about the Holocaust in the media and also in the political and popular meetings.” — President Ahmadinejad of Iran, December 9, Iran state TV

This week, the Islamic Republic of Iran is holding its third conference devoted to denying the Holocaust since President Ahmadinejad came to power.

Much more than just insulting the memory of 6 million lies behind why Holocaust denial has become state policy in Iran. Something more sinister is at play.

As an adviser to the Iranian president, Mohammad Ali Ramin, said, according to the Iranian reformist daily Rooz of June 9, “The resolution of the Holocaust issue will end in the destruction of Israel.”

Yesterday and today, 67 “foreign intellectuals” from 30 countries are taking part in “Holocaust World Prospect,” a conference sponsored by the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies.

According to a Mehr News Agency report from December 5, the focus of the conference is “whether the Holocaust really happened.” Six official sessions are devoted to uncovering the “truth” about the Holocaust.

In his opening speech yesterday, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference was aimed at creating an appropriate scientific atmosphere for discussing the Holocaust. The host of the conference, Raoul Mousavi, added that Iran was providing an opportunity to discuss the Holocaust “away from Western taboos.”

Attendees include a who’s who of Western anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. A former head of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, is giving the keynote address.

French professor Robert Faurisson told participants yesterday the Holocaust “never existed” and praised Mr. Ahmadinejad, who “will allow the truth to emerge in the end and uncover this great lie.” Frederick Toben of Australia’s Adelaide Institute told the conference that “claims … about the mass gassings and burnings [are] a physical impossibility,” while French writer Georges Thiel called the Holocaust “an enormous lie.” Bradley Smith, of the America-based Committee for the Open Debate of the Holocaust, said, “Gas chambers never existed.”

Of all the attendees, a group of anti-Zionist rabbis from America and Australia have received the greatest acclaim in the Iranian press.

Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi gave a series of news briefings leading up to the start of the conference yesterday. On December 6, he provided background for why the conference was occurring. The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying, “The points raised by President Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust a year ago resulted in a bizarre worldwide hue and cry. … The president simply asked whether an event called the Holocaust had actually taken place.” He also told the Fars News Agency on December 5 that “Iran, as an unbiased state, would accept the truthfulness of the Holocaust if sustaining evidence is presented.”

This week’s conference is just the latest chapter in Iran’s Holocaust denial, which has risen to unprecedented levels since Mr. Ahmadinejad became president. Exactly one year ago this week, he stated live on Iran TV for the first time that the Holocaust was a “myth.”

Many of the world’s best-known anti-Semites praised Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement, as did leading Western Holocaust deniers — who now have an undisputed leader. A month after the president’s speech, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced that it would sponsor the first of multiple events that would examine the “truth” behind the Holocaust.

On February 14, the Iranian ambassador to Portugal, Mohammad Taheria, discussed a spring conference Iran was planning to assess the true scale of the Holocaust. “It is necessary that historians meet, discuss, and give their opinion, talk about numbers,” Portugal’s Public Radio Antena 1 and the Mehr News Agency quoted him as saying. “When I was ambassador to Poland, I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau twice and I did my own calculations. To incinerate 6 million people you would need 15 years.”

In the first week of March, the Bassij, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, held its own conference, “The Holocaust: Myth or Reality,” initiated by the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

Another conference came in the last week of June. According to IRIB, “Scholars and people gathered in Tehran to examine the case of the Holocaust at a distance from the world hegemony’s media propaganda. … The conference … aimed to open the door to a fair judgment of the widespread claims about the mass killing of Jews during World War II.”

Next up for the Iranian government’s event planners is a conference “to study the genocide of the American aborigines by European immigrants” on February 27.

Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.