Iran: Attack of the Zombies

So Ahmadinejad sends a letter to Bush on May 9. It doesn't have a lot of positive content, but it is an unprecedented communication considering that Ali Khameini has been violently opposed to talks with the U.S.

The same day, Khameini's representative sends another letter to Time Magazine. This one does have concrete proposals aimed at defusing conflict with the western nations.

The two letters are accompanied by other signs that Iran wants to talk.

This is the background for the bogus story about yellow stars for Iranian Jews. People are talking about talking...and if there's one thing Bush wants to keep off the table, it's the talking option. Hence, the timing of the yellow star hoax.

Yes, it was quickly debunked. A cynic might say it doesn't matter. What matters is that people stopped talking about talking.

A cynic might also point out that even having been debunked, the story lives on in the febrile minds of the Iran hawks. A cynic might cite Roger Simon:

The folks over at Talking Points Memo are rather convinced that the Iranian Dress Code story is "already debunked" (here and here). None of them speak a word of Farsi, as far as I know, but the word of Juan Cole is apparently good enough for them - better obviously than that of Farsi native speaker Amir Taheri, whose column first broke the story.

Needless to say, there was more than just 'the word of Juan Cole' debunking the hoax. From the Reuters article:

1. A copy of the bill obtained by Reuters contained no such references.
2. Reuters correspondents who followed the dress code session in parliament as it was broadcast on state radio heard no discussion of proscriptions for religious minorities.
3. Senior parliamentarian Mohsen Yahyavi described the Canadian report as "completely false".
4. Iran's Jewish MP Moris Motamed also agreed the bill made no attempt to force special garments on the minorities.

But none of that matters, of course. Nor does it matter whether the Roger Simons of the world are mendacious or merely ignorant. What matters is that the lie lives on and has taken root as an alternate narrative--one that will be trotted out repeatedly by the warbloggers to justify military action in Iran. That's the way the right works: they don't ever need to prove anything; they just have to provide a semi-plausible alternative to reality in order to give themselves a pretense of justification for their crazy beliefs.

The other thing that matters here, is that as far as anyone can tell the White House is not involved. Perhaps they have graduated from implausible deniability to the plausible kind. Perhaps they have learned from Iraq that it is better if they not be the ones who are repeatedly caught in lies. Outsourcing a good chunk of the propaganda campaign lets them reap the benefits without even having any responsibility to evade. It's a win-win for them.

We're going to see a lot more of this, and it's going to get a lot uglier. Get ready for a summer of killing zombies.

[That's all, folks]