A new Iranian film shows the country’s forces destroying a U.S. Navy fleet, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Battle of Persian Gulf II, directed by Farhad Azima, has opened in the city of Mashhad and will expand to other cities in the coming weeks. Azima told the AP that producers crowdfunded $250,000 for the movie, which was four years in the making, and received no government support.
The plot begins with the United States destroying an Iranian nuclear reactor, sparking a confrontation in the Persian Gulf. In a climactic confrontation, one Iranian vessel faces off against more than a dozen American warships. When told to surrender or die by an American commander, the captain of the Iranian ship, who closely resembles Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, responds, “General, I am not a diplomat, I am a revolutionary!” He then warns that any American serviceman involved in the attack “should order their coffins,” adding, “when you enter Hell, tell them Qassem sent you.” His crew then destroys the American fleet.
Azima claims that the movie is a response to American movies and video games that portray Iranians negatively. “We are saying that if you fire one bullet against Iran, a rain of hot lead will be poured on your forces,” he told the AP.
Iran has frequently threatened U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted a video to his YouTube account last summer warning that“should any war break out, one who will emerge humiliated out of it will be invading and criminal America.”
In a February 2015 naval exercise, Iranian boats destroyed a replica of an American aircraft carrier. During the broadcast of the exercises on Iranian state television, a banner flashed across the screen with the quote, “If the Americans are ready to be buried at the bottom of the waters of the Persian Gulf – so be it.” The quote was attributed to the first leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Brig. Gen. Ali Fadavi, commander of the IRGC’s naval forces, explained in May 2014 that his troops were simulating attacks on American aircraft carriers “because destroying, annihilating, and sinking U.S. boats has and will be in our plans.” The following month, he warned the U.S. to leave the Persian Gulf, saying, “Americans’ removal from the Gulf is one of the basic tasks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” and boasted that Iran could destroy the American fleet stationed there in 50 seconds.
In January 2016, Iran seized two U.S. Navy boats and ten sailors after they entered Iranian territorial waters. Khamenei praised the Iranian troops who captured the sailors, saying that they did “God’s deed,” and subsequently gave medals to the commanders in charge of the capture.
There were hundreds of incidents last year involving Iranian boats approaching U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf too closely or harassing them. The U.S. Navy’s Central Command “assessed all of these interactions as unsafe and unprofessional due to the Iranian vessels not abiding by international law and maritime standards,” a Navy spokesman said.
In ‘We Don’t Want to Forget’: In Tehran, Revenge Is a National Ethos, which was published in the June 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein observed that hatred of the U.S. is “central” to Iran’s ethos, shaping “both its identity and its ideology.”
[Photo: IranClips / YouTube ]