As I discussed yesterday in this diary,
http://www.dailykos.com/... the story that Iran was forcing Christian and Jews to wear identifying badges turned out to be an exercise in neo-con agit-prop. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, an Iranian neo-con writer, living in the west and backed by a neo-con "public relations" firm and a neo-con newspaper, the Canadian National Post, put out a false story in an effort to encourage the west, and specifically, the U.S., to attack Iran. That it has been discredited won't undo the damage. It will stick in the mind of the average citizen. Expect similar stories in the near future.
First the National Post, realizing they couldn't get away with their neo-con agit-prop backtracked
http://www.canada.com/...
Today, the Iranian government has denied the story :
"Iran denied a report that it passed a law that would force non-Muslims in the Islamic Republic to wear colored labels identifying their religion.
The Canadian National Post yesterday reported Iran's parliament passed a law last week for a public dress code that would require Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth on their clothing, Christians a red one, and Zoroastrians blue. Iran is a predominantly Muslim country.
``Such a bill was never introduced in the parliament,'' said Maurice Motammed, Iran's only Jewish deputy who represents Iran's community of 25,000 Jews, on state television today. ``Iranian minorities benefit from the same liberties and social rights as other people.''
A bill to promote ``an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women'' was passed in Iran's Parliament on May 14. However, it didn't mention religious minorities, Emad Afrough, head of the parliament's cultural committee and one of the main designers of the measure said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA.
The article appeared in several newspapers around the world, drawing criticism from top Canadian and Australian officials. U.S. State department spokesman Sean McCormack said such a decision would be ``despicable'', Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.
The report was described by Iran's local state media as a failed ``campaign lead by a Zionist newspaper.''"
http://www.bloomberg.com/...