Assistant Iranian President for Nationalities and Religious Minorities Yonsei Ali after denouncing Zionism at a synagogue in Iran. Photo: IRNA.

Assistant Iranian President for Nationalities and Religious Minorities Yonsei Ali denounced Zionism in a speech to a Jewish congregation at a synagogue in Shiraz, southern Iran, according to Al Arabiya.

At a Friday night Shabbat, Ali said, “While there may be relatively few members of al Qaeda and Salafist Islam and the Zionist Jews and pro-Christian extremists, they pose a threat to international peace, and everyone must address them.”

Blogger Elder of Ziyon, who flagged the report on Sunday, said: “No official word on what would have happened to any of the honored Jews if they would have publicly disagreed with him about Zionism.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights group, said the event was nothing more than a “photo op.”

“This insidious photo op by the Mullahocracy reminds us that there is no religious freedom for minorities in Iran,” Cooper charged. “Jewish people’s prayers whether uttered in Shiraz, Sydney, Los Angeles, or Jerusalem are replete with longing for Zion. The attacks on religious minorities and the attempt to portray them as a ‘threat to international peace’ is reminiscent of similar propaganda campaigns against enemies of the atheist Soviet State against Jews.”

Cooper added, “The common denominator between these two regimes, one Godless and the other theocratic, is their totalitarian nature, that has no room for any narrative or belief, other than their own.”