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B’nai B’rith International decries the patently anti-Semitic comments made June 26 by Iran’s vice president at an international anti-drug conference and urges the United Nations and international officials to deplore these statements.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, has since condemned the comments and reaffirmed Europe’s commitment to fighting racism and anti-Semitism. B’nai B’rith commends Ashton’s remarks, in which she reiterated the “”EU’s absolute commitment to combating racism and anti-Semitism.”

At the event in Tehran, co-sponsored by the United Nations and Iran, Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said the Talmud teaches Jews that they are a superior race. He also blamed the Talmud for the worldwide spread of illicit drugs, reportedly claiming that “Zionists” firmly control illegal drug trade. He is quoted as saying: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict. They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”

Rahimi also claimed that Zionists ordered gynecologists to kill black babies and that Jews started the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—an uprising in which, he says, mysteriously, no Jews died.

“This was an anti-drug conference, not a platform for hatred. But once again, the U.N. stage has been exploited by a regime which continues to spew hatred, abuse human rights, deny the Holocaust and seeks to destroy the Jewish state,” said B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin.