Iran calls U.S. assassination charges ‘Nazi propaganda’

Iran’s foreign minister accused the United States of Nazi-style propaganda for charging that Tehran was linked to an assassination plot on American soil.

Iran has denied being involved in the alleged plot, which would have paid organized crime groups in Mexico to carry out the killing of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. using explosives.

“These charges are like propaganda methods used during the Hitler era when they said make the lie big and loud and repeat it over and over again so that even you yourself would eventually believe it,” Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi was quoted by the Web site of the state television network IRIB as saying on Oct. 17.

Hitler used the term the “big lie” in his book “Mein Kampf” to refer to a lie so “colossal” that it would be widely believed. Hitler argued that Jews used the technique to blame Germany’s World War I loss on Erich Ludendorff, one of the nation’s top generals, and it was later used to describe Hitler’s own style of governance.

Salehi said Iran had asked the United States to provide information about the two Iranian men arrested in the plot and warned Saudi Arabia not to bring the case to the U.N. Security Council.

Earlier on Oct. 17, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred correspondence from the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia to the Security Council.