Follow-up on Iranian religious policies

According to this extensive round-up at Unqualified Offerings, the scare story about Iran requiring religious minorities to wear distinctive badges or clothing (posted here) is false:

The National Post's Chris Wattie follows up his own paper's earlier report with even more denials. Excerpt:

Meir Javdanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East who was born and raised in Tehran, said yesterday that he was unable to find any evidence that such a law had been passed. "None of my sources in Iran have heard of this," he said. "I don't know where this comes from."

Amir Taheri's original article is three pages long. That's a lot of detail, albeit, as one rereads the article, poorly sourced detail. There are no quotes from the law in translation, and the lone Iranian poobah quoted speaks largely of the dress requirements for Muslims. What I'm saying is, it's very hard to believe Taheri's article constitutes an innocent mistake. The smart bets are either that his story is correct, or that he lied. If you prefer, he was either right, or he wrote in reckless disregard of the truth.

Hat tip to Hit and Run.