Iran: Pinkwashing's Flipside

A story by Dan Littauer claiming four men in Iran had been sentenced to death for "sodomy" has been published by four British gay news sites; Gay Middle East, Gay Star News, LGBTQNation, and Pink News.
In the last few years, a number of stories about men being executed in Iran "just for being gay" have been found not to have happened, or to have no evidence to back the story up.
Because of their emotional potency, they are used for propaganda purposes by the Right about an Officially Declared Enemy of the US - the modern equivalent to First World War horror stories about German soldiers bouncing babies on their bayonets. 
It's the flipside to pinkwashing of Israel.
Scott Long, former LGBT director at Human Rights Watch, asks how sure we can be this time. 

"You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, on the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, say, "Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?" I could say, "Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist." I don't need any evidence. Suppose I said, "George Bush is a terrorist." Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence, "Why would you say that?""

Noam Chomsky, 2002 interview. 

Update: There are some very interesting interviews with LGBT Iranians in LGBT Republic Of Iran by Small Media - which contradict the line that men are regularly executed for being gay and/or having gay sex).