Iran Response To 'Argo,' Oscars 2013 Best Picture Winner: Argo Is 'An Ad For The CIA'; Iran To Release 'Accurate' Version

An Iranian director plans to produce his own hostage-release movie in Iran in response to "Argo," the award winner for Best Picture at the Oscars 2013.

"Argo" is a film about a secret operation that extracted six U.S. diplomats from Iran in 1980. Ben Affleck directed the film, which was officially viewed in Iran as an "Anti-Iranian" film.

Michelle Obama helped to present the award for Best Picture to "Argo." After the film won, Iran's Mehr News Agency called the Academy Awards "politically motivated" and the film an "advertisement for the CIA".

Iran's state-run broadcaster Press TV wrote, "The Iranophobic American movie ('Argo') attempts to describe Iranians as overemotional, irrational, insane, and diabolical while at the same time, the CIA agents are represented as heroically patriotic. ['Argo' is] a far cry from a balanced narration...[it is] replete with historical inaccuracies and distortions."

The director of the Iranian film-response to "Argo," Ataollah Salmanian, told MNA, "The movie, entitled 'The General Staff,' is about the 20 American hostages who were delivered to the United States by the revolutionaries."

He told CNN, "This film, which will be a big production, should be an appropriate response to the [inaccurate] film Argo."

Salmanian was not clear in his report what hostage incident he was referring to.

Senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and Iran expert Barbara Slavin noted that 13 African Americans and women were released shortly after the takeover in what hostage-takers claimed was sympathy for oppressed minorities.

Another hostage who was suffering from multiple sclerosis was released six months later, she added.

Slavin explained Iran's strong reaction to the film and its critical acclaim, "The movie 'Argo' has embarrassed Iranians who would rather forget the hostage crisis - the violation of international law and the cruelty it entailed. 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 mentioned that former president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told her in a 2005 interview 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.

Salmanian has said that since "The General Staff" will be based on "eye-witness accounts", it will tell the true story of "Argo."

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