Today, the Jewish lawmaker says simply that Iranian Jews are Iranians. They stay because it’s their country. And Moreh Sadegh says he supports his country’s foreign policy, even when it comes to the Jewish state.

He says Judiasm is not the same as Zionism, the project of building Israel.

“There is a great difference between being a Jew and being Zionist,” he says.

The lawmaker draws more distinctions when it comes to Iran’s controversial former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who raised questions about the Holocaust.

“I think that the Ahmadinejad case must be viewed from another window,” Moreh Sadegh says. “He does not deny [the] Holocaust clearly. He said there is some question about [the] Holocaust, and this idea was not the official statement of the Iranian government. This was only a personal idea of President Ahmadinejad.”