Iranian FM Zarif: Holocaust was tragically cruel

Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday that the extermination of Jews by the Nazi regime was "tragically cruel and should not happen again," German TV station Phoenix reported.

According to the German report, Zairf further noted that "We have nothing against the Jews. We do not feel threatened by anyone."

Nonetheless, he claimed that "the rights of the Palestinians have been violated by Israel for 60 years." According to images and reports from the confrence, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya\’alon heard Zarif\’s comments while he himself was sitting in the hall.

Last September, in an interview to Georgre Stephanopoulos on ABC news\’ The Week, Zarif said “The Holocaust is not a myth. Nobody’s talking about a myth.”

Iran has faced massive criticism in recent years for its repeated Holocaust denials, purported by its former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often invoked the phrase “the myth of the massacre of Jews” which according to ABC news also appeared in a translation of 2006 speech Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.

As part of the Iranian regime\’s newfound desire to normalize relations with the international community, Zarif has backtracked previous denials, opting for condemnations of the Holocaust segued into criticism of Israel.

“We condemn the killing of innocent people, told Stephanopoulos, adding that the "Holocaust was a heinous crime, it was a genocide, it must never be allowed to be repeated, but that crime cannot be and should not be a justification to trample the rights of the Palestinian people for 60 years,” he said, echoing Sunday\’s claims.

Iran sealed a cooperation pact with the International Atomic Energy Agency last November, pledging to be more open about its nuclear activities. The IAEA and Iran are due to meet again in Tehran on Feb. 8 to discuss future measures.

Iran\’s foreign minister held rare private talks with his US counterpart on Sunday and said it would be a "disaster" if Tehran did not turn a provisional agreement to defuse a decade-old dispute over its nuclear program into a permanent deal.

Zarif said Iran and the West had an historic opportunity to improve relations. "I think we need to seize it," he said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is due to visit Tehran soon, urged Iran to "come clean" on its past nuclear activities, saying some intelligence agencies believed Iran had had a nuclear weapons program until early 2003.

But Republican US Senator John McCain was more skeptical, saying Iran had a long history of deception.

"There are three components to nuclear weapons – warhead, delivery system and the material itself. They are… cheating on the first two without any constraint whatsoever," he said.

A senior State Department official said US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had met with Zarif, had raised his concerns about the issue as well as the delay in moving Syria\’s chemical weapons to the port of Latakia and about humanitarian conditions on the ground, especially in besieged areas.

Kerry urged Iran, a staunch ally of President Bashar Assad, to play a constructive role in bringing an end to the three-year conflict, the official said, adding that Zarif made clear he did not have the authority to discuss Syria.