Why is it so easy to believe the worst of the peaceloving geniuses who enslave Iran?

The Washington Times via the World Peace Herald (!): Iranian badge law sparks outrage

Reports of Iranian plans to force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear color-coded badges in public sparked a flurry of outrage in the Bush administration and elsewhere yesterday, despite an emphatic denial by the only Jewish member of Iran's parliament.

Canada's National Post newspaper reported in yesterday's editions that a law passed Iran's parliament earlier this week that would require Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth, Christians red and Zoroastrians blue.

Iran's only Jewish member of parliament, Maurice Motammed, denied the report late yesterday, calling it a "complete fabrication" and "totally false," according to a dispatch by Agence France-Press from Tehran.

Of course, there were more than a few German Jews who urged everyone to refrain from overreacting to the Nazis...

By then, however, Iranian exiles had "confirmed" the report, and the U.S. government and world leaders had condemned Iran, some comparing the purported measure to Nazi laws that required Jews to wear Star of David insignia during the Holocaust.

Mr. Motammed said he had been present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was voted on. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities," he said.

"This is an insult to the Iranian people and to religious minorities in Iran," he told Agence France-Presse.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the idea behind the legislation was "despicable," but added U.S. officials did not have a clear idea yet of what was in the bill.

He said reports of the measure had been circulating for months as it worked its way through Iran's legislature.

"I'm not going to try to delve too deeply into giving a definitive comment about something on which I don't have all the facts," Mr. McCormack said.