BERLIN (JTA) — A German foundation has removed Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Mostafa Dolatyar, from its board of trustees.
According to a report in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation ejected Dolatyar because of a past "anti-Semitic, aggressive anti-Israeli statement."
Berlin-based Iran expert Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, who also is a member of the German government experts commission on anti-Semitism, translated a 2010 statement in Farsi by Dolatyar saying that the Irani official "hoped that the prophecy of the imam regarding the fall of this regime [Israel] will soon come to pass."
The American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office had called for Dolyatar’s ouster in October, and efforts were ramped up this week by the Stop the Bomb campaign, which pushes for stronger sanctions against Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Another member of the foundation’s board, German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann, dropped out "in part" over the presence of Dolatyar. Foundation spokesman Jorg Kronsbein told the Tagesspiegel that Dolyatar’s statements about Israel, about which the foundation had been unaware until now, "are completely unacceptable."
