Iran plans a movie response to 'Argo'

An Iranian director plans to produce Iran's own hostage-release movie in response to Argo, the Oscar-nominated film about a secret operation that extracted six U.S. diplomats from Iran in 1980, Iran's Mehr News Agency reported Friday.

"The movie, entitled The General Staff, is about the 20 American hostages who were delivered to the United States by the revolutionaries," director Ataollah Salmanian told the Persian service of MNA on Tuesday.

"This film, which will be a big production, should be an appropriate response to the ahistoric film Argo," he added.

Argo, which is directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars in the film, was officially viewed in Iran as an "anti-Iranian" film, MNA noted. It has received seven Academy Award nominations, including for best picture.

Filming on The General Staff will begin next year if the necessary funds are provided by the Art Bureau, which is affiliated with the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, MNA reported.

It was not clear from the report what hostage incident Salmanian refers to, nor when the incident took place, but Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an expert on Iran, notes that 13 African Americans and women were released shortly after the takeover in what hostage-takers claimed was sympathy for oppressed minorities.

Another hostage suffering from multiple sclerosis was released about six months later, she said.

Salmanian said he used eyewitness accounts to write the screenplay for the film, which he will also direct.

"The movie Argo has embarrassed Iranians who would rather forget the hostage crisis -- the violation of international law and the cruelty that it entailed," Slavin said. "Long before the movie, however, Iranian officials have tried to portray the 444-day ordeal as not so terrible for the hostages and justified in light of Iranian fears that the U.S. would try to reimpose the Shah's rule."

Slavin said that former president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told her in an interview in 2005 that the hostages "left Iran in a relaxed mood" and that the U.S. was at fault for admitting the deposed Shah for medical treatment.

In addition to The General Staff, Iranian screenwriter Farhad Tohidi has announced plans to write a screenplay for a TV series about the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by Islamist students and militants.

Tohidi said he would see Argo to complete his research for writing the series entitled The Broken Paw, MNA reported.