Tehran, Iran ? Iran announced plans Sunday for a conference to examine evidence for the Holocaust, a new step in hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s campaign against Israel – one that was likely to deepen Tehran’s international isolation.

Ahmadinejad already called the Nazis’ World War II slaughter of European Jews a “myth” and said the Jewish state should be wiped off the map or moved to Germany or the United States.

Those remarks prompted a global outpouring of condemnation, and it wasn’t clear who would be willing to attend an Iranian-sponsored Holocaust conference.

Late last year, however, the leader of Egypt’s main Islamic opposition group joined Ahmadinejad in characterizing the Holocaust as a “myth” and lambasted Western governments for criticizing those who dispute the Jewish genocide.

“Western democracies have slammed all those who don’t see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust,” Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Mahdi Akef wrote on the group’s Web site.

Tehran already had further raised international concern about its nuclear program last week when it resumed what it called “research” at its uranium enrichment facility.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers his budget bill to the parliament Sunday in Tehran, Iran. Iran announced plans to examine evidence for the Holocaust on Sunday, a move likely to deepen the country's international isolation.

In calling for penalties against Iran’s “irresponsible” behavior, Republican Sen. Trent Lott pointed to Tehran’s plans for the Holocaust conference.

“At the minimum, we should go to the U.N. Security Council and we should impose economic sanctions unless there is some dramatic change in the Iranian position,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Holocaust survivor who was born in Budapest, Hungary, also has said he understood Iran was considering a conference that would call into question evidence that the Nazis conducted a mass murder of European Jews during World War II.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi did not disclose where or when the Holocaust conference would be held, nor would he say who would attend or what had prompted Tehran to sponsor it.

On Saturday, however, Ahmadinejad urged the West to be sufficiently open-minded to allow a free international debate on the Holocaust. Asefi adopted that theme.

“It is a strange world. It is possible to discuss everything except the Holocaust. The Foreign Ministry plans to hold a conference on the scientific aspect of the issue to discuss and review its repercussions,” Asefi told reporters.

Earlier this month, the Association of Muslim Journalists, a hard-line group, proposed holding a similar conference, but Asefi said he was not aware of the association’s wishes. He said the conference he announced was planned and supported by the ministry.