Australian neocon, John Howard, “has reacted with horror to a new Iranian law forcing Jews and Christians to wear colored badges,” reports National Nine News. “The Iranian parliament passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical ’standard Islamic garments’, Canadian newspaper the National Post reports,” while failing to mention the National Post is swamped with neocons and was owned by Israel Harold “Izzy” Asper, a prominent member of Canada’s Jewish community and energetic defender of Zionism until his death in October, 2003.

As Paleo notes on the Daily Kos blog earlier today, the author of the “colored badges” story is Amir Taheri. “Google the name Amir Taheri and you will find that his writings are published by National Review, the New York Post, the Jerusalem Post and the Weekly Standard. But more significant is that he has sponsored by Benador Associates, an erstwhile public relations firm whose founder, Eleana Benador has major right-wing [or rather neocon] connections.” Benador’s client list is a veritable who’s who of criminal neocons, including Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle, James “World War Four” Woolsey, Michael “Universal Fascist” Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot, Frank Gaffney, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser, Laurie Mylroie, and New York Times war propagandist Judith Miller (the only neocon to see the inside of a jail cell—but for the wrong reason).

Naturally, Taheri’s story was immediately and hungrily pounced upon by the usual suspects, including the Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews in Israel, and the New York Sun in America and Judeoscope in Canada, to name but a few.

Mr. Taheri’s questionable “story” is grist for the Nazi comparison mill, trotted out with increasing frequency as the shock and awe campaign against Iran ramps up. Executive Director of American Jewish Congress Council for World Jewry, Neil Goldstein, simply could not contain himself: “Iranian President Ahmadnejad denies the Holocaust ever occurred, but closely follows the Nazi playbook as he forces Jews to wear yellow cloth and threatens to destroy Israel, just as the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars as a prelude to implementing their program of genocide.”

“This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles, told United Press International. “Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”

Meanwhile Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council in Washington, D.C., billed as an “evangelical Christian” (in other words, he is a Christian Zionist), believes the bogus badge story “proves that the worst in human history does repeat itself” (i.e., Iran is Nazi Germany reborn) and urges “President Bush, Secretary Rice and Congress to take swift and severe action against Iran and enforce the most dire of consequences should the country enact this supremely inhuman decree.”

It should be noted that the dubious badge story came from “Iranian expatriates,” that is to say the Iranian equivalent of Iraqi expatriates (who happened to have close ties to the neocons and the Pentagon) responsible for telling outrageous lies about Saddam and weapons of mass destruction and other chimerical horrors.

“Faced with the sudden prospect of relevance, exile [Iranian] activists are jockeying for recognition from U.S. policy makers,” writes Ronald Hilton. “They are touting contacts with the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA. They boast of tete-a-tetes with members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff…. They prominently display Christmas cards from Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, an early backer of legislation that would provide financial support to the Iranian opposition. In Washington, they’re making the rounds like actors looking for an agent…. Some Iranian exiles speculate that someone among them could emerge as the next Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader who helped to spur the American invasion of Iraq with his now-discredited intelligence indicating that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed chemical and biological weapons.”

In fact, the whole thing stinks like a neocon re-run, more than three years removed. Adding dismal memories of the Holocaust make it all the more repugnant.

Of course, it does not matter if the star of David story blows over or evaporates under the harsh glare of truth—the impression is left indelibly in the minds of millions, especially impressionable Americans: the mullahs of Iran are the New Hitler (right behind Osama and then Saddam) and if we don’t “take swift and severe action” against the people of Iran—imagine bunker-busters and mini-nukes bursting over Tehran—these Islamic monsters will “wipe Israel off the map,” never mind that Israel has more than 400 nukes and has expressed the desire to use them (and in fact used them to blackmail the United States in 1973).

Israel can take care of itself—and it should and leave us out of the sordid mess with its neighbors.