Yellow stars for Iranian Jews? The disinfo campaign

Back in May the US Congress, in its cravenly Israelocentric way, voted huge gobs of money to go into the destabilization of Iran under the so-called “Iran Freedom Support Act”. (Which follows the same strategy the neo-cons used back at the beginning of their project to “con” Americans into invading Iraq. Anyone remember that?)
But how on earth is the administration going to spend all this new IFSA money?
I am sure that the people tasked to do this– who include several longtime neocons from the Pentagon’s infamous former Office of Special Plans— will have lots of “plans” for how to go about it. But one of them may well be to do all kinds of disinformation about the Iranian regime… Including getting their old pal Amir Taheri to pen an op-ed in Canada’s National Post which claims that last Monday, the Iranian parliament passed a law that,

    envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public…
    Religious minorities would have their own colour schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths. Jews would 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.

Scary stuff indeed. Especially coming from a regime whose President has cast public doubts on the facticity of the Holocaust and made some extremely hostile remarks about Israel…
Except that all of Amir Taheri’s scaremongering about these special dress-codes and insignia is constructed out of, well, “whole cloth”. (Which is to say, it is quite baseless.)
But it seems that some “world leaders” are prepared to believe just about anything bad they hear about the Iranian regime, and don’t hesitate to criticise Teheran roundly for its alleged misdeeds even before they do any even basic checking on the veracity of the underlying accusations. Thus, we see in this report in The Australian that,

    Australian Prime Minister John Howard said overnight, during an official visit to Ottawa, that “anything of that kind would be totally repugnant to civilised countries, if it’s the case, and something that would just further indicate to me the nature of this regime. It would be appalling.”
    Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had only seen reports about the law but that he would not be surprised by them.
    “Unfortunately, we have seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action,” he said.
    “It think it boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany,” he added.
    “The fact that such a measure could even be contemplated, I think, is absolutely abhorrent.”

But it wasn’t. It was all just Taheri’s fabrication.
It seems that on May 14, the Iranian parliament did pass legislation dealing with the need to buttress the existing nationwide dress-code and build up an Iranian clothing industry to support it… But colleagues whom I trust who read Farsi assure me that there is nothing in there at all about any special clothing or markers for religious minorities.
Taheri has been a busy person these past few days… If you go to the information page about him on the website of the well-connected neocon “Speakers Bureau” Eleana Benador Associates, you will see that he has published eleven op-ed pieces since May 9. Nearly all of them are virulently anti-Teheran. The main exception to that is this totally non-credible piece of propaganda about how well the US occupation authorities have been doing in Iraq…
Well, Taheri is just one ideological (though probabloy at this very point, very nicely paid) uber-hack. The more serious question is why national leaders like Howard and Harper were so perfectly primed to “respond” so quickly to the very damaging (and baseless) accusation that he had made about a foreign government. Maybe next time they could have their people do some fact-checking before they open their mouths?

13 thoughts on “Yellow stars for Iranian Jews? The disinfo campaign”

  2. benador associates is a like an asylum for the insane. I remember reading Laurie Mylroies “the war against America” it was all about how saddam hussein was behind the first wtc attack and most likely 9/11 and the okhlahoma city bombing! Almost like they were trying to get people to invade Iraq or something.
    then I was watching the history channel and they talkes about how ramzi yusef , from the 93 wtc attack, was a nephew of khalid sheik muhammed. I remember thinking “wow that whole book was wrong”.
    I actually wrote Daniel pipes an email asking him about it and he was like “yeah she got bit by the conspiracy bug “. She actually tried to get him booted off some government policy board because he didn’t buy into her weird idea of “state sponsered Iraqi terrorism”.
    Wasn’t amir teheri head of SAVAK or something?

  3. I don’t know what’s drive some of US citizens to keep saying that Oklahoma City and trough it on the Muslims.
    How ironic and how short memory Americans had, some of those keep saying same, linked this bombing to us, how much hate they have in their minds toward Muslims? There are no answers for that just they have dead hearts, naivety, as one of our commutators keeps posting all time on this space same hateful posts.
    I wonder when did GWB asked “Why They Hate US” did he saw his follow Americans why they through there crime on us?
    Its not just people do that but some US media do that also.
    Did Oklahoma City bombing ! Needs more evidences to prove it was purely a US internal crime?
    Oklahoma bombing conspirator’s son jailed

  4. You wrote> on May 14, the Iranian parliament did pass legislation dealing with the need to buttress the existing nationwide dress-code and build up an Iranian clothing industry to support it… You wrote> on May 14, the Iranian parliament did pass legislation dealing with the need to buttress the existing nationwide dress-code and build up an Iranian clothing industry to support it… < The link was in Arabic. Can you explain for the rest of us what the legislation actually said, and how far it impinges -- or not -- on sexual morality; i.e. against women and male non-conformists?

  5. just had a look at benador’s board of directors. It’s like that bunch of mutant villains the superfriends would fight. dennis Prager’s radio show makes rush limbaugh look like like howard dean. he is so hateful of “the left” and “democrats”. he is just deeply hateful in general. not surprisingly, he covered this story on friday. I wonder if he’ll even bother correcting it. I’ve called him on so much stuff on the air that I don’t even bother anymore. and I ain’t that bright!

  6. Here we go, when in doubt side with Ahmadinejad.
    Check out the official Iranian
    “>http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961377561&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull> denial :
    A diplomat at Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York called the report “completely false.”
    “We reject that. It is not true. The minorities in Iran are completely free and are represented in the Iranian parliament,” the diplomat said, speaking anonymously because he was not allowed to make official statements.
    A strong denial by an anoymous person not allowed to officially speak. Give me a break.

  7. This is scary. The Iran playbook is the same as the Iraq playbook, and we didn’t do so hot with that one last time. I don’t think we can steer the debate away from suicidal warmongering on its own merits. Many have already suggested that Bush will invade Iran, even if prematurely, knowing that future leaders won’t have the guts to do it (meaning they will realize it’s a bad idea).
    I’m sorry to say it, but I think the only way we can stop our country from invading Iran is not by debating the issue, but by debating the credibility of those making the decisions. One survey showed that 58% of the public support military action against Iran, but only 42% believe the Bush team is the right one to make the decision. That’s what the debate has to be about, or come 2009, we will have tripled (at least) the severity of our current mid-east quagmire.

  8. A strong denial by an anoymous person..
    POSTED BY AN ANOYMOUS PERSON, HIDING DOESN’T HAVE BRAVENESS TO TELL US WHO IS THIS ANOYMOUS HATEFULL COMMUTATOR IS? AND WHY

  9. showed that 58% of the public support military action against Iran, but only 42% believe the Bush team is the right one to make the decision.
    To those who talking loudly and prod with their democracy, show us your democracy that’s works from the people to the people, not what “Bush Team” own believes which his and his group thinks right or wrong.
    Hitler also democratically elected then we saw “Hitler Team “ miss the entire world , we are in the same case here.

  11. I think the reason Howard and Harper responded like they did has a lot to do with the reasons that Kerry, Clinton, Edwards and others responded like they did to the WMDs claims in Iraq: they know it was all a lie (or else they are dumber than bricks) but they want a war, think it will be easy, and think all will turn out well FOR THEM AND AMERICANS. They don’t give a damn about anyone else on the plant or how it impacts them.
    And why do they want a war? It makes them money, and keeps their true masters (the media-military-industrical corporations)happy and making money.
    Why else would Lockheed Martin and Haliburton advertise on CNN? It is part of the “kick-back” scheme…. advertising $$$ to the media, campaign $$$ to the politicials.
    We are losing our country.

  13. Back to the main focus here, while some Israeli sources are still running with this whopper as a “real” story, others have called the spade a spade:
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/717935.html
    Yet even here, while the focus is on the willingness of the west and Israelis to believe the worst about Iran, we don’t see much comment about the “credentials” (Taheri) and “network” (Benador) behind the original story. And so it goes.

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