Iranian Government With Panties in Wads over ‘300’

The Iranian government is bitching to the United Nations about a movie. I kid you not. They want the U.N., specifically, UNESCO to take action against Warner Brother’s and the film. A movie.

Iran Protests to U.N. Over ‘300’

Apparently, they’re upset at being portrayed as warlike and barbaric. The nation that just put a nuclear symbol on the 50,000 rial banknote. They’re concerned that Iranian culture is being insulted. Rather than engage in academic discourse on the factual inaccuracies concerning Warner Brother’s portrayal of The Battle of Thermopylae, Iran wants the movie to go away. How is it possible to make Iran look any worse than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad already has with his Holocaust denials and even hosting a Holocaust denialist convention!

Iran’s biggest circulation newspaper, Hamshahri, said 300 is “serving the policy of the US leadership” and predicted it will “prompt a wave of protest in the world… Iranians living in the U.S. and Europe will not be indifferent about this obvious insult.” Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the movie was a US attempt to “humiliate” Iran in order to “compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers.”

Iran has a very rich and proud cultural history. It’s in the cradle of civilization for Pete’s sake! But if they honestly think that Hollywood is a tool of the U.S. government, they know nothing of capitalism and a free market society. I’m sure every American soldier who sees the film will immediately identify with the 300 Spartans who fought off King Xerxes of Persia at the beginning of the 5th century BCE. As a former soldier, I can say with some authority that many of my former peers wouldn’t even realize that Iran is in the land once known as Persia. And, for the ones that do, they’re smart enough to realize that battles then have nothing to do with conflicts today!