Iranian Film Depicts Destruction of U.S. Navy

A filmmaker in Iran has released a 90-minute movie depicting the destruction of U.S. Naval forces by Tehran.

Associated Press correspondent Nasser Karimi reported on the film’s release (“Iranian film hails demise of U.S. Navy in imagined Gulf battle,” March 2, 2017). Iranian director Farhad Azima created the animated film, entitled “Battle of the Persian Gulf II.” The movie is a sequel to an earlier work about the 1980’s Iran-Iraq War.

According to the AP:

“In the film, a character who closely resembles Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, leads a single vessel against more than a dozen American warships. When a U.S. commander orders him to surrender or die, he replies: ‘General, I am not a diplomat, I am a revolutionary!’

“He [Soleimani] warns that any American soldiers taking part in an attack on Iran ‘should order their coffins,’ before his forces destroy the whole U.S. fleet.”

The movie depicts the U.S. Naval ships as being obliterated “with a barrage of rockets, some of which tear American flags from their masts.” The battle follows an imaginary U.S. attack on an Iranian nuclear facility.

Azima asserted that the film was made with no government involvement from Tehran and that money was raised from “ordinary people” in Iran. Yet, the ruling mullahs exercise considerable censorship and control over Iranian life; it’s unlikely that the movie was made without their tacit approval.

The AP dispatch claimed that, since the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, “tensions are rising again” between the U.S. and Iran. However, this is not the first time in recent months that Iran has threatened U.S. armed forces.

In November 2016, an Iranian ship “pointed its weapon” at a U.S. Naval helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz (“Iranian ship threatens U.S. helicopter, media MIA,” CAMERA, Dec. 5, 2016). Iran also has threatened U.S. ships, in August 2016 and January 2017, among other instances (“Official: U.S. Navy ship fires warning shot at Iranian boats,” CNN, Jan. 9, 2017). Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told CNN in January 2017 that there were a total of 35 instances of Iranian ships acting belligerent towards U.S. vessels in 2016.