A cartoon exhibition entitled "The Pirates of the Queen” has been opened to the public at the Osveh Cultural and Art Center in Tehran.

The exhibition, as the name implies, features numerous caricatures depicting Queen Elizabeth II in response to the unlawful seizure of Iran's Grace 1 supertanker by British Royal Marines off the coast of Gibraltar.

The opening ceremony was presided over by Seyyed Massoud Shojaie Tabatabaie, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Visual Arts.

In his opening statement Shojaie Tabatabaie stressed the fact that the colonialist attitude behind these actions show that, the queen far from being an impeccable saint, is in fact a sly fox.

"As the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has stated the time for hit and run tactics is long over," he said.

The cartoons in this exhibition are in keeping with the idea of using humour, allegory and sarcasm as ammunition.