Iran’s former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has described the Holocaust as a “historical reality” — a direct attack on his controversial and revisionist successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don’t forget that one of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German national socialism was the massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews,” the cleric said in comments carried in the Iranian press on Wednesday.

The Holocaust, he asserted, should be recognised “even if this historical eality has been misused and there is enormous pressure on the Palestinian people.”

Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, has on two occassion dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” created by the West in order to justify the creation of Israel.

He has also said the Jewish state “must be wiped off the map” or moved as far away as Alaska — comments that have provoked anger in the West and even condemnation from the UN Security Council.

Ahmadinejad’s comments have also served to increase tensions over Iran’s atomic energy drive, seen in the West as a mask for weapons development.

Khatami served as Iran’s president from 1997 to 2005, and attempted to open up Iran to the West and initiate a “dialogue among civilisations” — in sharp contrast to the ultra-conservative agenda of Ahmadinejad.

EJP