Geneva — Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf ignited a storm of global discourse on Monday, declaring Israel to be “Nazism in the 21st century” during an impassioned address at the Sixth Inter-Parliamentary Union World Conference. His remarks, delivered before lawmakers from around the world, marked a pointed escalation in Tehran’s condemnation of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Ghalibaf, a powerful voice in Iran’s conservative establishment, accused Israel of waging a campaign of systematic extermination against Palestinians, likening its military aggression to the darkest crimes of Nazi Germany. The speaker painted Gaza as a contemporary Dachau—an open-air prison turned graveyard—while chastising Western governments for their deafening silence and implicit support.
“There is no longer any ambiguity,” Ghalibaf said. “The world is witnessing a genocide broadcast in real time. What Israel is doing in Gaza is not defense. It is engineered destruction, fully documented, fully armed by the West, and deliberately ignored.”
The speech was not merely symbolic. Ghalibaf referenced the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report titled “Anatomy of a Genocide,” which laid bare the structural and systematic intent behind Israel’s military campaign. He cited the mass starvation, targeting of civilian infrastructure, and widespread use of incendiary bombs as evidence of a state policy designed not to defeat Hamas, but to erase Palestinian life.
In Geneva’s stately conference hall, Ghalibaf warned that history would not forgive the global community’s indifference. “Delaying confrontation with this criminal regime will place you—every parliament and every politician—in the ranks of the complicit,” he told the assembly.
This rhetoric mirrors Tehran’s broader strategy of rallying international opinion against Israel by invoking morally loaded historical analogies. The “Nazi” label is neither accidental nor rhetorical overreach. For Iran’s leadership, it is a deliberate inversion of post-Holocaust Western narratives—designed to flip the moral equation and accuse Israel of practicing the very evil it was born to resist.
Ghalibaf also reinforced Iran’s stance that resistance to Israel is not merely regional, but a legal and moral imperative. “Iran’s position is one of legal self-defense against a rogue state backed by nuclear-armed powers,” he said, calling on lawmakers to initiate sanctions and refer Israeli officials to the International Criminal Court.
The speech, timed to coincide with rising international criticism of Israel, also landed as Tel Aviv faces mounting legal scrutiny. A growing body of human rights organizations, including groups within Israel itself, have echoed similar claims, warning that the situation in Gaza meets the threshold of genocide under international law.
In the final moments of his speech, Ghalibaf turned his ire toward the United States and European powers. “The weapons dropped on Palestinian children are marked with your tax dollars. The silence you maintain is interpreted as license for more killings. History will write your names among the enablers,” he said.
While the West continues to frame Israel’s actions as self-defense, the Iranian speaker’s remarks found sympathetic ears among delegates from Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia. Many nodded in solemn agreement as Ghalibaf insisted that “the global South must lead where the West has failed.”
The address also reinforced Iran’s soft-power pivot—using international forums not merely to critique the status quo, but to position itself as a voice for the voiceless, particularly amid the Genocide in Gaza.
According to Mehr News Agency, Ghalibaf’s comparison of Israel to the Nazi regime was not simply rhetorical flair, but part of a strategic framework designed to rally parliamentary institutions worldwide toward action, accountability, and the redefinition of international norms regarding genocide and war crimes.
