Now the Iranians are jumping on the bandwagon:

An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie “300″ for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported.

Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being “part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture”, said the report.

Shamqadri was quoted as saying “following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture,” adding “certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies.”

The movie’s effort wound be fruitless, because “values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans”, said the Iranin official.

Again, I hate to break it to you Iranian dudes, but the movie was based on a Frank Miller graphic novel, which pre-dated our current president, about a historic military engagement that took place some 1000 years before Mohammed inflicted Islam on the world. So it has little to do with any attack on “Islamic values” by our “bellicose Bush administration”, as you guys are panting to infer.

You guys are descended from Persians, I get that. But facts are facts: you did blow 50-1 odds, you did made a mockery of Persian military might, you did lose in the invasion of Greece, only to eventually be invaded and conquered by Alexander. I mean, you have every right to be as embarrassed about that as we are to be proud of the Greeks, I guess (Western groupthink, as it were). But blaming it on America is a bit of a stretch, as the history on which the film is based obviously has nothing to do with us, or Islam.

Besides, you’re making the assumption that the average “300″ audience member even understands that Iranians are the modern-day Persians. In fact, until “300″ hit the theater, most of them probably thought of “Persians” only as a particularly hairy breed of cat. This sort of over-estimation of American intellect will surely prove your undoing.