Several reformers criticized the cartoon competition and also the president's statements about the Holocaust. Emadoddin Baghi, a member of the religious-intellectuals circle, Ebrahim Yazdi, the head of Nehzat Azadi Party, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a prominent figure of Islamic Iran Participation Front and Sadeq Zibakalam, a prominent political analyst of the Kargozaran party criticized these new policies by calling them "useless, scientifically-baseless and purely political actions which originates from the authorities' lack of historical knowledge". In an interview with BBC, Nikahang Kowsar, a former cartoonist for "Hamshahri", said he thought the competition was the wrong approach. "It's a bad reaction to a bad action coming from the Danish newspaper", he told the BBC. He also claimed in his weblog that, "Hamshahri" cartoonists will have a bad fate if they refuse to take part in the competition.