Iranian Dress: Lies Wide Open

by Tom Porteous

Released: 24 May 2006

When does misinformation work? It works when it plays to existing prejudices and assumptions and when it is broadcast loudly and widely enough. Then it will do its pernicious work however strenuously the lies and distortions are subsequently denied and exposed.

On 19 May a Canadian newspaper, the right-leaning National Post, published a front page story which reported that the Iranian parliament had passed a new law outlining proper dress for Iranian Muslims and including an order for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear special strips of cloth. Jews were to wear yellow cloth strips, Christians to wear red cloth strips, and so forth.

The story was clearly of dubious provenance. It was sourced to “Iranian expatriates," but if it had any truth, it could with a little effort have been verified. The Iranian parliament has a website and a press office. Iran also has an active press which follows such stories closely. A quick call to a few Iranian journalists in Tehran would have authenticated the story if it were true.

But the story played to fears and assumptions about Iran. In the current climate of relations between Iran and the West, Western media stories which make Iran appear like Nazi Germany apparently don't need to be authenticated before Western and Israeli politicians jump to attention.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was one of the first to the pillory post. "Unfortunately,” he said, “we've seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action. 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."

In Israel, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, seeking to be heard above a cacophony of outraged reaction and calls for regime change in Tehran, declared: "Whoever makes Jews anywhere wear the yellow star again, will find themselves in a coffin draped in black."

In the United States, Chuck Schumer, a Democratic Senator was quick off the mark, issuing a press statement calling the Iranian regime “lunatic” and “pernicious.” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack felt obliged to declare that such a measure would be “despicable” and “carry clear echoes of Germany under Hitler.”

However there was no such Iranian measure. As more responsible media reporting from Tehran soon made clear, the Iranian parliament did pass a bill on clothing on 15 May, as the National Post reported. But the bill did not outline proper dress for Iranians and it did not mention any religious or ethnic minorities, let alone order Jews to wear yellow cloth strips.

As Maurice Motamed, the Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, told the Financial Times in Tehran on 21 May, “When I heard this, I immediately felt it was a mischievous act, a fresh means of pressure against the Iranian government. We representatives for religious minorities are active in the parliament, and there has never been any mention of such a thing.”

The main thrust of the bill was in fact to protect Iranian “national dress” by providing financial support to Iranian garment manufacturers and designers who are being undercut by cheap imports of new and second hand clothing. This is rather an interesting story, but it is not the one reported in the National Post and relayed by agencies and blogs around the world.

By the time the real story got out, however, the damage had been done: one more confirmation that Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany and that the Islamist regime is ripe for the toppling.

So where did the story come from? The main identifiable source of the story was a commentary on the inside pages of the same Canadian newspaper by the Iranian expatriate journalist Amir Taheri.

Taheri is no stranger to the misuse of information for political purposes. In the 1970s he was the editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, the propaganda organ of the Shah's repressive autocracy. Today he belongs to the unrepentant right of the neo-conservative camp in the United States. He still thinks the war in Iraq was a good idea and blames the current crisis of U.S. confidence in Iraq on distorted and sensational U.S. media reporting rather than on the reality of a country in the grip of military occupation and sliding into civil war.

Long an outspoken critic of the mullahs in Iran, Taheri is a leading advocate for the overthrow of the Islamist regime. He is tireless in “exposing” the threatening designs and capabilities of the government in Tehran. He is also a severe critic of Western moves to negotiate with (i.e., “appease”) the Iranian regime. In a Wall Street Journal article on 9 May, Taheri expressed contempt for the increasing number of calls from a wide range of U.S. politicians for direct negotiations with Iran and a deal which would allow the regime to stay in power.

After the National Post story was exposed as baseless, Taheri remained unapologetic. He issued a press statement through his agents, the PR firm Benador Associates, which says that he stands by his original commentary. (At the same time he implied that he did not write what in fact he did write in the commentary.)

The National Post did not issue a correction or an apology for its story for almost a week. It merely reported the Iranian denials and used this new report as a pretext to repeat the original allegations and to report the reactions to them -- complete with a graphic of a yellow star of the kind Jews were required to wear in Nazi Germany. Internationally, especially in Israel, the false story it still being circulated and debated. The damage is done.

The road to the disastrous war in Iraq was paved with lies and misinformation. It appears that those advocating the overthrow of the Islamist regime in Iran have embarked on the same campaign of distortion and media manipulation to prevent a peaceful resolution of the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. One does not have to be an apologist for the Iranian regime to hope that these warmongers fail in their effort.

Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist and author, formerly with the BBC and the British Foreign Office.

Copyright © 2006 Tom Porteous / Agence Global

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Released: 24 May 2006
Word Count: 1,008
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Topics:

Afghanistan

Africa

Arab World

China

Europe

Iran

Iraq