Iran To Sue Hollywood Over "Iranophobic" Films Like "Argo"

There's a new word on the block- "Iranophobia"- and French anti-Zionist lawyer and Muslim convert Isabelle Coutant-Peyre will use that as the basis of a lawsuit filed on behalf of the government of Iran. They're suing a bunch of Hollywood elite for portraying the Islamic Republic in a distorted manner. "Argo", which won an Academy Award for Best Picture seems to have been the proverbial straw.

"I'll be defending Iran against films that have been made by Hollywood to distort the country's image, such as Argo," she said, according to quotes carried by the semi-official Isna news agency.

As with most films inspired by historical events there were some embellishments In "Argo" not based in reality. The Canadians (most importantly Ambassador Ken Taylor) were far more instrumental in the escape of the six U.S. diplomats than the CIA's Tony Mendez, who was in Tehran less than two days. The six were hidden by the Canadians for three months, and the CIA almost botched the whole escape. But that's Hollywood. It's creative license.  Ken Taylor wasn't happy about Canada being relegated to a very minor role in the film, but he's not suing.

Taylor and the Ayatollahs aren't the only ones who were angered by "Argo".

A large group of Iranians believe that the film stereotypes Iranians in a negative way without drawing a distinction between ordinary citizens and the revolutionaries behind the US hostage crisis.

Perhaps. Then again, the vast majority of Iranians did vote for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to establish an Islamic Republic after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, so one can only assume that although they might not have participated in the hostage taking, they were probably initially sympathetic.

The other films Iran has taken umbrage with:

 300, which depicts King Leonidas and a force of 300 men fighting the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC – which was described by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "insulting to Iran"; Brian Gilbert's 1991 film Not Without My Daughter; and The Wrestler.

All of which are based on truth.

Isabelle is in Tehran to work on the lawsuit they plan on presenting to an international court.

A little background on the charming Isabelle.

Coutant-Peyre is the wife of the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, whom she is also representing. Ramírez, a self-styled international revolutionary, is serving a life sentence for the killings in 1975 of two French policemen and a suspected informant. Coutant-Peyre and Ramírez married in a ceremony held in jail in 2001 after she converted to Islam.

She also attended "The Hoax of Hollywood", a conference which, according to Mohammad Lesani, was meant to "unify all cultural communities in Iran against the attacks of the west, particularly Hollywood".  "Argo" was deemed to have violated "international cultural norms", whatever that means, and that the Academy Award it received was a "propaganda attack against our nation and entire humanity".

I'm not quite sure what they feel is a distortion. It's a fact that hundreds of  Islamic revolutionary students held a bunch of U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. End of story.

Of course, threats of a lawsuit and claims of producing their own film to counter Affleck's "Argo" could be just that, threats and nothing more.

We shall see what unfolds.