The Ayatollah Begs to Differ by Hooman Majd Page B

Ahmadinejad himself, that organizing a conference on the Holocaust in Tehran (held in the winter of 2006 to wide ridicule mainly outside, but also to some extent inside, Iran) had been a good idea. At least in terms of how the media would see it. Iranians, particularly those who haven’t traveled much outside the country and no matter what their level of education, have very little knowledge, if any, of the Holocaust. Contemporary European and American history is not taught much in schools, films and documentaries on the Holocaust rarely make it to Iran, and books on the Holocaust are rarely translated. It was and is still generally accepted by most Iranians that something very bad happened to European Jews under the Third Reich, but because it didn’t affect or have anything to do with Iran, not even Iranian Jews, who were mostly unaffected by World War II, the Holocaust was rarely thought about by Iranians until their president decided to make it an issue of great import.
    Javanfekr was frozen by the question. He stared at me for a very long time, not angrily, but more with a bewildered look in his eyes. I was impressed that he didn’t want to repeat the standard government line, or a denial of Holocaust denial; perhaps he just didn’t have an answer that he thought would satisfy me. An Iranian who lives in New York might not, he may have reasoned, understand the subtleties and nuances in his president’s pronouncements and actions.
    I thought of Fuad, my Jewish-Iranian friend from Los Angeles who had explained to me his perspective on Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial with no small measure of admiration for what he saw as the finest example of Persian ta’arouf one-upmanship. Ahmadinejad, Fuad reasoned, had in effect said to the Europeans (and, in a letter, to Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany) that he couldn’t believe that Europeans had been or could be such monsters (and this at a time when Iran was being portrayed as monstrous). “You’re not monsters,” Ahmadinejad was saying. “Surely not? Surely you’re a great civilization,” a sentiment that could only compel the Europeans, and particularly the Germans, to respond in effect, “No, no, no, we were. We really were monsters. The very worst kind.” And by further asking why Israel had had to be created by them, he was essentially getting the Europeans to admit that they were entirely capable of genocide again. It didn’t matter, Fuad suggested, that Europeans by and large didn’t squirm, for Iranians and Arabs got the message, if only subconsciously. The Westernized and West-worshipping Middle Easterners whom Ahmadinejad loathes with the same passion as Khomeini did could hear the civilization they so admire shout, loud and clear, “Yes, yes, we committed the very worst genocide in history. Only a few years ago, and who knows, we could do it again.” And Ahmadinejad must have, Fuad said, derived enormous satisfaction in hearing Europeans indignantly insist that their fathers were mass murderers. But Javanfekr was unwilling or unable to explain the thought process behind a Holocaust conference in Tehran, and maybe Fuad had been too generous in his reading of Ahmadinejad’s intentions.
    Javanfekr continued to stare at me with blank, almost glazed eyes behind his large, square 1970s-style glasses, unwilling or unable to tackle the subject. I felt a little sorry for him: perhaps it would have been much easier if I had been a foreigner. I changed the subject and we engaged in the kind of polite small talk and ta’arouf that lead nowhere and are one reason for the perpetual paralysis of Iran’s bloated bureaucracy: “I am at your disposal should you need anything” (he most certainly wasn’t), “Please call if you require anything” (please don’t, for if you do, I will have to lie and say I will help when in fact I’d much rather not), and, from my lips, “Thanks so much for giving up your valuable time” (he seemed to have nothing else to