Russia’s Question: Israel Remembers the Holocaust, But Why Compare Iran’s Nuclear Fear to It?

Moscow — Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has strongly questioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements against Iran.

Netanyahu claimed that in every generation, enemies rise to destroy Israel, and in this generation, the Iranian regime has planned a nuclear Holocaust using nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles. Previously, he also said that names like Natanz, Fordow, and Bushehr would have joined the death camps — Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Sobibor. Zakharova asked: Did Iran carry out the first Holocaust?

She recalled that under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule, Iran declared war on Nazi Germany in 1943. Subsequent generations in Iran openly spoke positively about that decision.

According to Zakharova, the Holocaust was perpetrated by Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, the Vichy regime’s collaborators, and Baltic and Ukrainian accomplices. However, since 2014, Israel has not uttered a single word of condemnation against the Kiev regime — which has elevated figures such as Symon Petliura, Yaroslav Stetsko, and other Bandera and Galician SS collaborators, who were complicit in the extermination of Jews, to the status of national heroes.

She noted that the Bank of England was among the sponsors of Hitler’s Nazi Party. The very same forces, she said, are now backing the Kiev regime.

Invoking Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Sobibor in the context of an alleged Iranian “nuclear Holocaust” against Israel, Zakharova stated, is an insult to the memory of all victims of World War II, the victims of genocide, the Holocaust, and the Red Army soldiers who liberated the death camps. She called such comparisons baseless, conceptually false, and historically distortive.

She added that Israel, of all countries, should know perfectly well that Bushehr is an exclusively civilian nuclear facility — a fact repeatedly confirmed by the IAEA.

Zakharova also recalled Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks from April 21: “Our experience has taught us to rely on facts… President Trump’s statements have focused on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The 2015 comprehensive agreement (JCPOA) was designed precisely to address this issue. It would be a major success if the ongoing efforts by negotiators — which we support — were to lead to something similar to the 2015 agreement.”

She also pointed out a small nuance: in fact, Israel does not have a safeguards agreement with the IAEA.