MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov) - I used to think football was the silliest pretext for war. I am talking about the Football War, also known as the Soccer War or the 100-hours War, a six-day conflict fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
First football fans clashed on the field, and then the two countries took up arms.
I was wrong: Iran has decided to outdo the Latin Americans. Their fury has been fuelled by "300," a recent American movie supposedly telling "the true story of 300 elite Spartan warriors led by their fearless king Leonidas, who repel the charge of Xerxes and his massive Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae" in 480 B.C.
Iran's cultural attache in Moscow, Mehdi Imanipour, said at a news conference at RIA Novosti that "the movie is provoking a confrontation and will most likely lead to a war."
But history cannot be rewritten, and the Spartans' fearless confrontation with the Persians is part of it, even though modern Iranians may chastise the movie "for its monstrous portrayal of Ancient Persians" and denounce it as "American psychological warfare against Iran."
On the other hand, it is true that the movie has little connection to real history.
I suspect that the Iranian cultural attache has not seen the movie, which is an adaptation of the graphic novel "300" by Frank Miller, and is only a fictional account of the Battle of Thermopylae. Everyone knows that comic books are not serious literature. If they were, we would be crossing swords over Superman.
"300" is one more horror movie shot for teenagers with an incredible number of dead bodies, just another movieland make-believe. The goal of producers is to profit from teenagers' desire to kill time without bothering them with too many true facts. This is exactly what the movie about the 300 Spartans is. Its producers and directors did not make it to annoy modern Iranians.
I observed the audience's reactions in the darkened movie theater and can tell you that the scandal I was expecting did not materialize. Teenagers watched the muscular Spartans and the effeminate Persians with incredible body piercing equally eagerly. One of them wrote on the Net: "Xerxes could have chosen a better tactic, but he probably lost what control he had of his mind when he had his piercing done. This is probably why he threw his army against the half-dressed Spartans so mindlessly."
I wonder why Greece did not take offence at "half-dressed Spartans" while Iran was infuriated by "the effeminate Persians"? Maybe the Greeks have a sense of humor, while the Iranians' seems to have been badly injured by the continued confrontation with Washington.
Mr. Imanipour said without a hint of irony that the movie could lead to "an ethnic clash." With whom? Americans? But the United States did not exist as a country during Xerxes' time. And then, what ethnicity is an ordinary U.S. GI?
Maybe the cultural attache meant Greeks? But the Spartans became extinct long ago.
Besides, there are problems with the "Persians" in the movie too, because Xerxes' army consisted mainly of mercenaries. His Mydian cavalry was made up of Kurds, his fleet was manned by Phoenicians and Egyptians, and the majority of the foot soldiers were lightly armed archers from Central Asia and javelin throwers from the eastern Mediterranean. There were also Parthians, Khorezmians, Bactrians, Arabs, Ethiopians, Thracians, and people from the small nations of the Caucasus.
Mr. Imanipour did not say if the descendants of these nations would attack Hollywood for inciting ethnic strife. Personally, I don't think so.
The Iranian diplomat said the movie producers had portrayed Xerxes as the embodiment of evil. Well, although the Spartans were no vegetarians either, it is a historical fact that it was Persia that attacked Greece, and not vice versa. Didn't Mr. Imanipour know that?
If the movie is indeed part of the Americans' "psychological warfare against Iran," they have won it, judging by Tehran's reaction. For what can be more comical than fighting a character from the comics?
However, I think there is a simpler explanation. Tehran is nervous and therefore taking minor things too seriously. It has overrated its nuclear achievements, promised to erase a member state of the UN from the face of earth, and begun an absurd war against movie characters.
Everything has a beginning and an end. Iran's arguments have come to an end, and its negotiating partners have become tired. The next meeting of the UN Security Council on Iran, scheduled for late May, might approve additional sanctions against it.
You can say that Iran will survive them, just as it survived previous sanctions. But what will it do after that? This is where the endless comic-book battle really becomes boring.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
