Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Ploy

Jim Lobe. IPS News

WASHINGTON, May 22 (IPS) — A story authored by a prominent U.S.
neo-conservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly
requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive
colour badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was
exposed as false.

The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal,
Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in Friday's
edition of Canada's National Post, which ran alongside the story a
1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow,
six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi
legislation at the time. The Post subsequently issued a retraction.

Taheri's story, however, was reprinted by the New York Post, which is
owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem
Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era
over a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Another neo-conservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted
the story Monday, claiming that the specific report that special
badges were required by the legislation had been "incorrect". At the
same time, however, the Sun quoted two Iranian-American foes of the
Islamic Republic as suggesting that dress requirements for religious
minorities were still being considered by Iran's ruling circles. It
offered no evidence to support that assertion.

The story, which was also noted in the Australian press, comes at a
moment of rising tensions between Iran and both Israel and the United
States over Tehran's nuclear programme which, according to the latter
two, is designed to produce nuclear weapons. Both the U.S. and Israel
have suggested that they may take military action against
nuclear-related targets in Iran unless ongoing diplomatic efforts to
freeze Tehran's programme bears fruit.

Juan Cole, president of the U.S. Middle East Studies Association
(MESA), described the Taheri article and its appearance first in
Canada's Post as "typical of black psychological operations
campaigns", particularly in its origin in an "out of the way
newspaper that is then picked up by the mainstream press" -- in this
case, the Jerusalem Post and the New York Post. A former U.S.
intelligence official described the article's relatively obscure
provenance as a "real sign of (a) disinformation operation".

Taheri's original article, entitled "A Colour Code for Iran's
'Infidels'", dealt primarily with new legislation that it said was
designed to ensure that Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments"
that removed ethnic and class distinctions and that eliminated "the
influence of the infidel" — presumably meaning the West — "on the
way Iranians, especially, the young dress".

But it also noted in passing that it would "envisage" separate dress
codes for religious minorities — Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians
— who will be required to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them
identifiable in public "so that (Muslims) can avoid shaking hands
with them by mistake, and thus (become) najis (unclean)".

In particular, he explained, religious minorities will "have to wear
special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic
faiths. Jews will be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in
front of their clothes, while Christians will be assigned the colour
red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the colour of their
zonnar," he wrote.

While Taheri did not evoke the Nazi precedent in his column, the
National Post asked its readers at the end of the piece, "Is Iran
turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online at
national post.com."

That was compounded by the Post's publication of a front-page article
by Chris Wattie which quoted unidentified "human rights groups" as
"raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that
would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured
badges to identify them and other religious minorities as
non-Muslims".

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," Wattie quoted Rabbi Marvin
Heir, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, as
telling him. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the
Nazis."

The story also quoted one Iranian exile living in Toronto as
confirming the story, as well as Canadian Jewish leaders and Prime
Minister Stephen Harper as denouncing the legislation and suggesting
that it was consistent with other recent moves made by Tehran.

Similarly, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who,
however, denied any specific knowledge about the alleged measure,
called it "despicable" and reminiscent of "Germany under Hitler".

In fact, however, the legislation contained "absolutely no mention of
religious minorities", according to Hadi Ghaemi, the chief Iran
researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), who said it included "only
generalities with regard to promoting a national dress code and
fashion industry that should be subsidised and supported by the
government".

The article — and especially its attribution to "human rights
groups" — was particularly unfortunate, he told IPS, because "it
plays into the hands of the Iranian government that wants to
discredit human rights issues that are raised at the international
level". The actual legislation was indeed "a troubling development",
but not for the reasons cited by the Post, he added, because "its
main target is most probably Iranian women".

Other denunciations were quick to follow. One Jewish representative
in the Iranian parliament, Maurice Motamed, insisted that colour
requirements for ethnic minorities had "never been proposed or
discussed in parliament", let alone approved. "Such news," he told
the Associated Press, "is an insult to religious minorities here."

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," he told
The Australian newspaper. "It is a lie..."

Two Israel-based Iran experts, Menashe Amir and Meir Javedanfar, also
denounced the original reports about the legislation, suggesting in a
follow-up article in the Jerusalem Post Monday that they were based
on outdated speculation about the impact on non-Muslims of the
adoption of Islamic dress standards.

Nonetheless, the Sun, without endorsing the specific contents of the
National Post articles, refused to drop the story, quoting "a leading
spokesman for Iranian Jews", the secretary-general of the Iranian
American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, Sam Kermanian, as thanking
"the world for its outcry" over the original reports and praising
Taheri as "someone with fantastic credibility".

Taheri is a member of Benador Associates, a public relations firm
that lists a large number of leading neo-conservatives, including
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) associates Richard Perle, David
Frum, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, and Joshua Muravchik, among its
clients. Major boosters of the war with Iraq, Benador clients, who
also include former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey
and former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky, have also called for the
Bush administration to take a hard line against Iran.

The newspapers that so far have run the story are similarly
identified with a hard line against Tehran. The National Post, which
was bought by CanWest Global Communications from Conrad Black, a
close associate of Perle's, is controlled by David and Leonard Asper,
who have accused the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of being
anti-Israel, according to Marsha Cohen of Florida International
University, who has closely followed the badges story.

Similarly, the Sun has consistently taken positions consistent with
the right-wing Likud Party in Israel on Middle East issues, while
Murdoch owns the strongly pro-Israel Weekly Standard and Fox News, in
addition to the New York Post.

"I think the way these stories played — particularly the references
to the Holocaust — was designed to arouse and play upon concerns and
accusations that Ahmadinejad is another Hitler who needs to be dealt
with accordingly," noted Cohen, who added that the Iranian
president's questioning of the Holocaust and aggressive statements
about Israel have made such stories more credible.