Whether you watch the History Channel religiously or have simply flipped through a world history textbook, you know that during World War II, Nazi Germany enacted the state-sponsored, systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews and other “undesirables” – the Holocaust.

But if you’re the president of Iran, that’s all just a myth.

Earlier in the month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his country would hold a conference to “research the topic of the Holocaust and all its dimensions in the future,” according to a statement on the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

The IRNA statement did not say when the meeting will take place or who will be involved, CNN reported, but the conference will be sponsored by Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the Organization of the Islamic Conference “and in consultation with other countries to pursue this issue.”

We’re sure many have R.S.V.P.’d already.

Ahmadinejad has ensured the world his conference will be a condemnable spectacle, as some of his statements made in December already suggest.

“They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred, and place this above God, religions and the prophets,” CNN reported Ahmadinejad saying. “The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews.”

Ahmadinejad has also sparked widespread international condemnation in October when he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

The Iranian president’s statements couldn’t have come at a worse time.

U.S. and European officials are concerned that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon under the facade of restarting its nuclear reactors for peaceful energy purposes, according to CNN. Iran’s government insists it has the right to build nuclear fuel.

Britain, France and Germany, or the so-called EU-3, have conducted failed negotiations with Iran. And now the EU-3, along with the United States, want the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, to turn the issue over to the U.N. Security Council, CNN reported.

“Our nation does not need a nuclear weapon,” Ahmadinejad has said. “We are a civilized and cultured nation. We have logic, we have civilization … Nuclear weapons are only needed for people who want to solve everything through use of force.”

Iranians may not need such a weapon; the world may not need such weapons. And we’re sure Ahmadinejad is accurate with his statement that Iranians have logic and civilization.

But one thing is certain – of the 68 million people living in Iran, Ahmadinejad does not fit his own description.

Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust never happened, yet he supports “wiping out” Israel.

Ahmadinejad has tried to make Tehran’s nuclear intentions appear innocent, but his outrageous statements suggest the opposite.

Anyone who tries to refute the Holocaust is by no means logical, and anyone who suggests “wiping Israel off the map” is anything but civilized.

The above editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.