Iran to produce an Argo-response series

Iran has started making a new series on the US embassy takeover in Tehran, in reflection to the deception by the Hollywood film 'Argo' (2012).

To be made six years after the 'Argo' release, the Iranian series will enlighten the distortion behind the US film which false-attempted to bend an important period of history in US-Iran relations in the early days of the Islamic Revolution.

Argo, the 2012 film by Ben Affleck which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2013, opens with a sentence saying the film is based on a real story. However, it is indeed a false alteration of what happened during the US embassy takeover in Tehran back in 1979.

Since the release of 'Argo', Iranian filmmakers who believed the film was a result of the sheer imagination of a number of American writers, have underlined the need to put together an artistic film with truthful historical account of the event.

Depicting the escape of the US embassy staff from Tehran during the takeover, 'Argo' was utterly criticized by Iranians. The anger was increased after Oscars announced it as the best picture category.

Iran dismissed the awarding as an “advertisement for the CIA” and a Zionist plot to misrepresent an event arising from the Islamic Revolution.

On November 4, 1979, and in less than a year after the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled a US-backed monarchy, Iranian university students took hold of the US embassy in Tehran, which had become a center of espionage and planning to overthrow the newly established government in Iran.

The students who seized the embassy later published documents proving that the embassy was indeed engaged in plans and measures to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

MG/MG