Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday the Holocaust was a "lie" and a pretext to create a Jewish state that Iranians had a religious duty to confront.
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel "Qods (Jerusalem) Day" rally.
"Confronting the Zionist regime (Israel) is a national and religious duty."
Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has provoked international condemnation for saying the Holocaust was a "myth" and calling Israel a "tumour" in the Middle East.
