JACKI LYDEN, host: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden.  Today is International Holocaust Memorial Day. The United Nations' General Assembly adopted a resolution yesterday condemning the denial of the Holocaust. The only abstention was Iran, where last month the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a conference that cast doubt on the Nazi genocide. The conference provoked worldwide outcry.

Now more than 100 Iranian exiles have signed a petition adding their voices to the chorus of condemnation. We spoke with two of the signatories: Afshin Molavi, a journalist and author, and Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."

I asked Azar Nafisi what went through her mind when she first learned about the Holocaust conference.

Ms. AZAR NAFISI (Author, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"): Well, I thought not again and not in my name...

Mr. AFSHIN MOLAVI (Journalist, Author): I think I felt that very much the same way. And you - when I saw it on TV, I thought about it on two levels. You know, first you think, you know, what a devastation of this history, of this, you know, of this horrible tragedy of the Jews. But then on a more personal level, as an Iranian - an Iranian-American - I think to myself, what sort of image is this portraying of Iran to the international community?

And, you know, one of things that I often notice is in America is that often Middle Eastern countries are often defined in many ways by their governments. For us Iranians, for 27 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with this scowling image accelerated by Ahmadinejad and Iran being defined by the politics of Holocaust denial and uranium enrichment. And those of us who know Iran and understand it, know it's a far more dynamic and sophisticated place than, in many ways, both the media image portrays and the Islamic Republic of Iran portrays it as...

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