Iran plans to sue filmmakers that contribute to “anti-Iran” propaganda like Oscar-winning film “Argo,” CNN reports.
Iran’s state-run Press TV reports that in addition making its own film in response to “Argo,” the country is hiring a controversial lawyer to sue Hollywood filmmakers.
“I will defend Iran against the films like Argo, which are produced in Hollywood to distort the country’s image,” French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told Press TV, according to CNN.
Iranian press has dubbed Coutant-Peyre an “anti-Zionist” lawyer. She is married to Venezuelan terrorist and self-proclaimed “revolutionary” Ilich Ramírez Sánchez — or “Carlos the Jackal.” He is currently serving a life sentence for killing two French policeman and an alleged informant in 1975. The two married during a jailhouse ceremony in 2001.
Coutant-Peyre also said that she plans to take legal actions against other films that have promoted “Iranophobia,” according to UK’s The Guardian.
It is not clear exactly who in Hollywood will be sued. Other films that have Iranians up in arms reportedly include “300,” “The Wrestler” and the 1991′s Sally Field film “Not Without My Daughter,” according to Deadline.
Ben Affleck both directed and starred in “Argo,” a dramatization of a declassified CIA mission to rescue six American diplomats hiding out at the Canadian embassy in Tehran after insurgents stormed the U.S. embassy in 1979.
“Argo” won the Academy Award for best picture, and Affleck won the Golden Globe for best director.
According to another official Iranian news outlet, the country will fund it’s own film entitled “The General Staff,” which is about 20 American hostages who were handed over to U.S. officials by Iranian revolutionaries. The film is seen as a response to “Argo.”
“The Iranophobic American movie [“Argo”] attempts to describe Iranians as overemotional, irrational, insane, and diabolical while at the same, the CIA agents are represented as heroically patriotic,” Press TV said.
Even if the dubious lawsuits do proceed, it is unlikely that they will take place in the U.S. since America and Iran severed diplomatic ties after the 1979 hostage crisis. A New York-based defense attorney told Deadline that Iran could take legal action against other countries that have distributed the “Iranophobic” films.