Misinformation About Iran

The online edition of the New York Post reports that the Iranian government has passed legislation requiring non-Moslems to wear distinctive clothing so that they can easily be identified, thus allowing the devout Iranian Moslem community to avoid contaminating contact. Here is the story: IRAN OKS ‘NAZI’ SOCIAL FABRIC By AMIR TAHERI

Naturally this has raised all sorts of vitriolic objections here in the US and in Europe. The comparison with the Nazi regime in Germany is an obvious one as the headline of the article suggests. The subtitle reads: “Yellow label for Jews as chilling dress code echoes the Holocaust”.

The problem is that the story is not true and had been debunked prior to the Post publishing it. Here is one example of the debunking: Juan Cole Commentary .

What makes this more interesting is the fact that the author of the Post piece is Amir Taheri, who, it turns out, is associated with the public relations firm Benador Associates. It just happens that Benador is staffed by neo-cons, you know the same group who brought us the Iraq war and are champing at the bit to have a go at Iran.

Now I would be first to deride and criticise the current regime of Iran: it clearly is an authoritarian nightmare whose agenda includes all sorts of horrible things. One aspect of that agenda is fighting the rising tide of westernisation of women’s fashion. So they passed legislation trying, probably vainly, to turn back the fashion tide. Stupid them. But that’s an awfully long way from Holocaust like labelling. Seems like Taheri was hired to do some negative PR to stir the anti-Iran pot.

The only question that arises from this story is: who paid Taheri? I doubt we’ll ever know, but I guarantee that this story will reappear in some form in the future when Bush and his cronies decide to build a case against Iran. Taheri is just laying the groundwork. Watch that space!