A group campaigning in Germany against the nuclear deal with Iran has called on German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to publicly condemn Iran’s Holocaust denial and the anti-Semitic Holocaust cartoon competition during his visit in Tehran this week.

During his two-day visit, Steinmeier will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Ali Larijani, chairman of the Parliament, before travelling to Riyadh for a meeting Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

In an open letter to Steinmeier, Ulrike Becker, from the STOP The BOMB campaign, writes : „The denial of the Shoah is no minor whim of the Iranian governance. It is in fact an expression of the centrality of anti-Semitism for the Iranian regime. The leadership of the Islamic Republic has moved the Holocaust denial to the center of foreign affairs and uses it as a political weapon against the biggest Jewish community in the world, against Israel.“

The group recalls that on January 27, the memorial day of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, Steinmeier declared: “One cannot draw a line under history.” Furthermore, he stressed that nobody in Europe can feel safe if ‘’Jews, people of different faiths and dissenters“ do not feel safe in Europe.

‘’If the federal government accepts Islamic anti-Semitism or acts indifferently toward it, this retroacts on the European societies,“ stresses Becker.

The campaign called upon Steinmeier ‘’to draw a red line on the arming of Islamist terrorist organizations and to support democratic forces in Iran and the region.’’

According to STOP THE BOMB, the Iranian regime has widened the confessional divide through the support of Islamist militias in Syria and Iraq, and thus is largely responsible for the rise of the Islamic State.

It adds : ‘’Moreover, the Iranian support for Assad is preventing a peace process in Syria and leads to a further escalation of the refugee crisis.

Becker says that regarding the domestic political situation in Iran there is no evidence for an opening, noting that ‘’the Iranian regime suppresses those who oppose the Islamist ideology and terrorizes homosexuals, women, dissidents and dissenters. More than thousand executions took place in 2015; Iran has the highest per capita rate of executions in the world."

The German Foreign Minister said his country wants to work with Iran to help calm regional conflicts now that the Islamic Republic is emerging from international isolation and also prevent tension escalating with regional rival Saudi Arabia.