Argo - 500bc - 2013

Argo - 500bc - 2013; Iran, Nuclear Weapons, Oscars and Ben Affleck

  The Persian Empire has long served as the foil to Western Civilization beginning the Persian and Delian League wars dating back to 500bc as the Athens lead their allied Greek City states against the invading Persian Armies.  The tight fisted authoritarian rule of the Persians were the antithesis of the freedom loving democracies of the Greek City States.  After the Iranian Parliament voted to nationalize British owned oil fields within Iran in 1951, the British attempted a failed coup, and then with the coordination of the CIA during Operation AJAX successfully orchestrated a second coup with the help of key Generals to restore the constitutional monarch of the English and American aligned Shah Pahlavi. With brutal oppression of communists and the national front grievances amongst the populace boiled over into the Islamic Iranian Revolution of 1979 under which the revolutionaries ousted the Shah and established an Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. In the heat of the Revolution, the American embassy was sieged and 66 hostages were taken beginning a spectacular and intense showdown between the US and new Iranian government.  6 diplomats at the Embassy managed to escape and find refuge at the nearby Canadian and Swedish Embassy.  The award winning film, ARGO, tells the harrowing true story of a CIA agent who leads an extraction team posing as Canadian filmmakers that enters Iran to provide fake Canadian Passports to the American diplomats hiding in the Canadian embassy, who manage to escape with the help of the CIA agent and his team by positioning the diplomats as actors in the film the Iranian Government had authorized the CIA team believed to be Canadian to film.

   As a movie, “ARGO” has been by all measures a tremendous success, winning 8 Oscars, including best picture and doing exceptionally well in the box office, earning over 130 million dollars to date.  The film combines action, factual history and elements of comedy in a way that left the audience in the theater when I first saw the film giving a round of applause.  Ben Affleck plays the confident and stubborn operative Tony Mendez superbly with noteworthy performances by George Clooney and John Goodman providing the charm and humor that make the movie so adored. If you are American, you have to love ARGO because it reminds us of a simpler time when we were the good guys outsmarting enemies by creative guile. As a subtle propaganda piece, the film does an excellent job at juxtaposing the American ideals of freedom with Middle Eastern oppression by illustrating historically real events.

   In the context of contemporary events, the film was timed perfectly with harrowing situations across the Middle East, most notably the events that transpired last October when the American Embassy in Libya was raided by an Islamist militia.  After the 1979 Revolution all 66 hostages were eventually eventually released at the end of 444 harrowing days of intense negotiation.  The crisis had a large role in Reagan’s election and early popularity. Unfortunately events in Libya had less fruitful outcomes as 4 members of the American diplomatic mission were killed.  Tensions between the Iranian and American Governments remain high even today as discussions on Iran’s nuclear program commence in the coming weeks.

Commissioned by Phillip Reilly