I came across this video at IranMilitary.Net.
The first segment (taking place in DC) is in CGI, with the Iranian portions using live actors. Apparently John McCain is a “senior White House official” rather than a crazy old man elected by voters. Their perception that George Soros has repeatedly attempted regime change through the use of opposition groups engaging in civil disobedience is accurate (though mostly for former Soviet countries), but the idea that the guy who thought preventing Bush’s re-election was the most pressing concern of his lifetime would be meeting with McCain or any current White House official is pretty funny. The domestic Iranian subversives are even harder to take seriously. Their ulterior motivation for serving as pawns of Uncle Sam is, get this…visas to enter the U.S! I know the cat might be out of the bag, but if you were in charge of Iran wouldn’t you not want to remind people of how much more pleasant life is in the U.S and how desirable it would be to go there? You would think people would learn after the communists mistakenly aired Dallas in the hopes of making capitalism look bad (no, I’m not going to link to that Washington Post op-ed, instead read Charles Paul Freund’s In Praise of Vulgarity). Fortunately the wayward youth involved in the nefarious plot (apparently involving a handgun in a duffel-bag) sends off troubled-teen rays to his mother, who is worried about who he’s hanging out with at late hours. She alerts the Stasi helpful authorities who let him off easy and all is well. I joke, but it is true that Iran has terrorism problems. There were some bombs planted near polling places around election time. My guess is that it was MEK (who our government continues to support even when Iran offered to turn over al Qaeda members in its custody in exchange for us selling MEK out) or separatists, who George Soros would want nothing to do with. UPDATE: Iranian propagandists have learned from the best.
If that isn’t enough Iran for you, enjoy some Iranian rap & rock and a half-hour preview of Persepolis.
Entitled to an Opinion 
May 4, 2008 at 7:44 am
When people believe that the US is a den of iniquity, reminding them that the standard of living is ‘better’ there works to your advantage, because they don’t perceive that as a good thing. It is imaginable that a good and faithful man might make a deal with the Devil in a misguided attempt to accomplish a worthy goal – but working with the US in order to enter the US? Such villains are clearly motivated by base and unwholesome appetites.
May 4, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Funny, but in all seriousness the Iranian revolution promised the goals of socialism through political Islam, including improved material well-being.
May 4, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Well, yes. I understand the founders of the Soviet Union used to make similar claims – and its leaders often used the decadence of their Western enemies for propaganda purposes.
There’s a technique for every conceivable situation: one for when the scapegoat is stronger, one for when it’s weaker, one for when it’s wealthier, one for when it’s poorer.
How the rhetoric gets to the desired conclusion is almost irrelevant. What matters is that it serves the existing power structure – everything else is negotiable.
May 4, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Wow, that was great, or at least the five minutes of it I could watch. I’d never heard of Gene Sharp before but he seems even less likely to be part of a high-level white house meeting than George Soros.
I wonder if our mental pictures of the inner workings of Middle Eastern governments are equally accurate.
May 4, 2008 at 6:37 pm
OK, here is some explanation of the propaganda goals of that clip, which makes it seem less purely silly.
May 4, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Huh, and I just accepted their claim that Gene Sharp was in the CIA. Thanks for the link. And the other link.
Our views of Middle Eastern governments are pretty inaccurate, but since the White House isn’t putting out these kinds of videos the stupidity is more like background radiation. In some sense, that may make it harder to correct.