And The Propaganda Begins.

You know that story that went round about Iran making Jews and Christians wear special badges? It turns out:

• it was completely false
• its ultimate source was a small Canadian newspaper, not normally where you’d go for the scoop on the Middle East

Cui bono?

Oh, remember that story about Iran’s leaders wanting to “wipe Israel off the map”?  Bogus too:

This affair is similar to the attribution to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the statement that “Israel must be wiped off the map.” No such idiom exists in Persian, and Ahmadinejad actually just quoted an old speech of Khomeini in which he said “The occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” Of course Ahamdinejad does wish Israel would disappear, but he is not commander of the armed forces and could not attack it even if he wanted to, which he denies.