Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his anti-Semitic attitudes and for denying the Holocaust, according to an article posted Tuesday on the website of The Atlantic magazine based in Washington.
"The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust," Castro reportedly said in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist with The Atlantic, who he had personally invited to Cuba.
According to Goldberg, Castro said in the interview that the Iranian President and his government would better serve the cause of peace by "acknowledging the 'unique' history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence."
Ahmadinejad is well known for his outbursts against Israel and the west in the past, and many in Iran accuse him of isolating Iran from the international community with his fiery speeches against the Western nations. His comments in 2005 that Israel was "doomed to be wiped off the map" had triggered an international outrage.
In his interview, Castro also warned Iran that its ongoing dispute with Israel and the West over Teheran's controversial nuclear and missiles program might lead to a nuclear war. The Cuban leader added that he did not believe that sanctions and threats would persuade Iran to back off from its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Though Iran insists that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful civilian power production purposes, the West suspects it a cover up for the Islamic country's nuclear weapon ambitions. Iran has already survived four sets of sanctions imposed on it by the UN Security Council following refusal to halt its nuclear development work.
"The Iranian capacity to inflict damage is not appreciated," Castro said. "Men think they can control themselves but [US President Barack] Obama could overreact and a gradual escalation could become a nuclear war."
Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul in February 2008, following an emergency stomach surgery in July 2006, and has made very few public appearances since then. However, his essays on Cuban and international politics appear frequently on government websites and state-run news agencies.
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