WASHINGTON — A number of American and European antiwar activists and conspiracy theorists have gathered in Tehran for a conference aimed at addressing supposed Zionist control of the United States, according to Iranian press reports and the Anti-Defamation League.
Code Pink chief Medea Benjamin, journalist and former Cambodian genocide denier Gareth Porter, conspiracy journalist and 9/11 truther Wayne Madsen, and PressTV contributor Kevin Barrett are all reportedly at the conference. Other reported attendees include Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, the anti-Semitic French comedian whose performances have been banned in several French jurisdictions, several Holocaust deniers, and former congressman Mark Siljander, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to being an unregistered foreign agent for an Islamic charity that the government said was connected to terrorism.
According to a PressTV article about the conference, the gathering’s “goal is to unveil the secrets behind the dominance of the Zionist lobby over US and EU politics.” The conference’s chairman is Nader Talebzadeh, an Iranian state TV host who previously organized a conference about “Hollywoodism” as a response to the movie “Argo.”
PressTV’s video report from the scene includes interviews with Porter, who is also shown addressing the audience, and with Madsen, as well as Art Olivier, a former California mayor who is a 9/11 truther.
The conference was originally conceived under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, though Iranian President Hassan Rouhani cancelled the conference in 2013 as part of Iran’s softening toward the West in advance of restarting talks over its nuclear program.
Former Council on American Islamic Relations official Cyrus McGoldrick, also in attendance, has been Instagramming photos from in and around the conference:
