American actor and documentary filmmaker Sean Stone along with the actor Val Edward Kilmer have been selected to star in an Iranian cinematic project.

Both actors are slated to appear in a true story inspired movie titled Airbus representing the crash of Iran Air Flight 655.

The story is about Iran’s civilian jet airliner that was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes on the way of Bandar Abbas to Dubai over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988.

While the incident led to death of 290 passengers with various nations including 66 children, it was named one of the deadliest disasters in aviation history.

The U.S. government has refused to apologize for the incident, claiming that the crew had mistaken the Iranian Airbus A300 for an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter.

Iran’s Visual Media Institute in collaboration with the American-Canadian company Reel Knights Productions are in charge of the film production.

Directed by Iran’s Nader Talebzadeh and American filmmaker Paxton Winters, the film bridges story from the east with skills of the west.

Iranian actress and screenwriter Mina Masoumi and the American documentarian and telefilm producer Scott J.T. Frank jointly wrote this cinematic project’s script.

Some parts of the movie are programmed to be shot in the United States.

The 27-year-old filmmaker and actor, Sean Stone became a Shia Muslim and chose to be known by the Muslim first name Ali as announced during a religious ceremony held in the Iranian city of Isfahan in 2012.

I assume the Iranians are not aware of Val Kilmer’s recent visit to Little Satan.

Don’t thank me Iran, I’m a giver.

As if freak explosions and sneaky computer viruses weren’t enough, Iranian public figures have recently accused Jews and Israelis of wielding magic and sorcery against the Islamic Republic. But not against the country’s suspicious nuclear program. No, no: Those sneaky Jews just wanted to rig the Iranian elections, with magic.

In a speech to religious students on April 20, Mehdi Taeb, who heads a think tank and is considered close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that Jews are powerful sorcerers who have used their abilities to attack Iran. He noted that while “the Jews” had yet to unleash their full powers, their abilities were negated after they tried to use magic to interfere with the Iranian elections of 2008 and 2009.

“The Jews are currently subjecting us to an unprecedented trial,” Taeb said, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “As you read in the Koran, [King] Solomon ruled the world… and God ordered a group of sorcerers to come out against him. The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool.

“All the measures that have been brought against us originate with the Zionists,” he continued. “The US is a tool in their hands. So far, they have not used the full [scope of] their sorcery against us. Sorcery was the final means to which they resorted during the [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad era, but they were defeated. This ability of the Jews was eliminated by Iran. Five years ago they tried to oust Ahmadinejad [by this means].”

An article on Jewish mysticism and numerology published in March on Rasanews.ir, an Iranian Islamic news site, alleged that “the Jews have always tended to resort to divination, [a practice] that has its roots in astronomy, astrology and sorcery, [which they picked up] when they consorted with various peoples in the course of history. They cherished this [knowledge] like a treasure, generation after generation… The [Jewish] people think that ruling over man, nature, and divine traditions can be achieved only by means of sorcery. They believe that it is possible to conquer nature and control the world, and even to control God’s decisions, by using sorcery methods.”

What Mehdi Taeb himself does not realize is I put an Antisemite Identification spell on him while he was giving the interview, which caused him to let down his guard and refer to “Jews” instead of “Zionists.”

Other spells we cast on Iran the past few years:

• Spell of Forgetfulness
• Really Lame Photoshops spell
• Insect spell
• Spell of Replication
• Bad Smell spell
• Spell of Itchiness
• Utter Obliviousness spell
• Really Bad Costumes spell
• Shortness spell
• Spell of Utter Delusions
• Spell of Exhaustion
• Cloud spell
• Reincarnation spell
• Bad Excuse spell
• Spell of Extremely Increased and Heightened Libido
• Really Hidden Zionism spell
• Fear spell
• Nausea spell
• Dubya spell
• Friendship spell
• Spell of Resignation
• Spell of Paranoia
• Spell of Illusions
• Invisible Cloak spell
• Spell of Vulgarity

Iranian men from the country’s Kurdish community are championing women’s rights in a rather peculiar fashion, by dressing in women’s clothes.

The photos of the cross-dressed men are posted online via social networking websites in a bid to honor women, reported The Independent on Wednesday.

With more than 7,000 Facebook likes, the group, known as The Kurd Men for Equality, is making their message known.

More than 150 photos have been uploaded depicting men donning female garments such as traditional dresses, veils and scarves.

The campaign was launched following the closure of a high profile domestic abuse case in Iran.

A man accused of harming his wife was sentenced, by the prevailing judge, to walk the streets of a city in the north-western Marivan region of Iran, dressed in women’s clothes.

The punishment was deemed misogynistic by feminists in the country, according to The Independent. 17 Iranian MPs wrote to the justice ministry decrying the ruling

Nice idea, but I suggest these men wear less slutty dresses.

Wouldn’t want to cause an earthquake.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicts that an earthquake will hit the country’s capital, Tehran, and displace its 12 million residents. The cause of the catastrophic quake? Promiscuous women, reports The Guardian.

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric, was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Which is interesting. Because I’d have thought the earthquakes were a result of Iran straddling several fault lines. Not the kind of straddling contemplated by the cleric.

It sure brings new meaning to the expression “making the earth move.”

Update: Apparently this is an old story, so I am not sure why it is being reported again this week. I guess the dangers of promiscuous women are always relevant.

Ali Razeghi, a Tehran scientist has registered “The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine” with the state-run Centre for Strategic Inventions.

The device can predict the future in a print out after taking readings from the touch of a user, he told the Fars state newsagency.

Razaeghi, 27, said the device worked by a set of complex algorithims to “predict five to eight years of the future life of any individual, with 98 percent accuracy”.

As the managing director of Iran’s Centre for Strategic Inventions, Razeghi is a serial inventor with 179 other inventions listed under his own name. “I have been working on this project for the last 10 years,” he said.

“My invention easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you.”

Razeghi says Iran’s government can predict the possibility of a military confrontation with a foreign country, and forecast the fluctuation in the value of foreign currencies and oil prices by using his new invention.

“Naturally a government that can see five years into the future would be able to prepare itself for challenges that might destabilise it,” he said. “As such we expect to market this invention among states as well as individuals once we reach a mass production stage.”

Razeghi said his latest project has been criticised by friends and relatives for “trying to play God” with ordinary lives and history.

“This project is not against our religious values at all. The Americans are trying to make this invention by spending millions of dollars on it where I have already achieved it by a fraction of the cost,” he said. “The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight.”

In an Israellycool exclusive, I have the first photo of the machine.

Update: Oops.

Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency seems to have retreated from its earlier, mind-boggling story saying that an Iranian scientist had invented the world’s first “time machine.”

Yes, you read that correctly: the world’s first time machine. Fars initially reported that the device could fit into a computer case and predict a person’s marriage age, education, occupation and number of children just by their touch. (It’s not clear precisely why the device is identified as a time machine when it doesn’t move people through time, although the Telegraph and others have translated the original Farsi this way.)

The device’s alleged inventor, 27-year-old Ali Razeghi, also said it could forecast wars and epidemics with 98 percent accuracy, and that the United States had invested several billion dollars in research on a similar machine.

But by the time the story went viral on English-language media — earning mentions everywhere from the Telegraph to Fox News to Wired — the Fars news story was offline. The link to the original Farsi story now goes to an error page. It seems it never even made it to the news agency’s English service.

So much for the invention that “satisfies all the needs of human society.”

I bet Razeghi didn’t see that coming.

Rocks thrown from the temple mount by the Romans. We’re not leaving Jerusalem again, look at the mess!

Their hatred of Jews is holding Arab and Muslim societies back: so says Ahmed Hashemi. He has a piece in the Times of Israel “Anti-Semitism is why the Arab Spring failed” that’s pretty brave considering who he is. From his biography:

Ahmad Hashemi is a former Iranian foreign ministry employee who worked as an interpreter. He is currently seeking political asylum in Turkey and works as a freelance journalist.

About the Arab Spring he begins:

I was not as optimistic. I argued that, unlike Iran’s opposition Green Movement – which was an uprising backed by predominantly secular, middle class and pro-western layers of society – the major opposition forces in the Arab streets were made up of Islamists and even salafists from poor neighborhoods, not real forces for change for the good. I contended that circumstances were not ripe for a positive transformation and that quick and bloody change would only exacerbate the situation by bringing anti-West extremist elements to power.

My skepticism gained further momentum by hearing and reading news headlines such as: “With more than 2000 years of Jewish heritage, Egypt shuts down its last synagogue,” or “Attacks on Coptic places of worship continue,” and “Egyptian high profile officials call Jews `apes,`” and “David Gerbi, the Libyan-Italian Jew who returned to his homeland, receives death threats,” and “The last synagogue in Iraq is closed, signaling the end of a 2,700-year Jewish presence there.”

These and other similar examples were indications that not only were the remaining small Christian and particularly Jewish communities becoming extinct in the Muslim world, but the already low tolerance towards the “other,” was shrinking. This is the main reason I continue to believe that Arab uprisings are unlikely to bring any change for the better.

It’s a great piece and I encourage you to read it all. It would be tremendous if more than a handful of Muslims ever saw material like this. But there’s just one step missing. What is the common element that spans all these Arab uprisings and even non-Arab Iran? There’s only one inescapable conclusion: Jew hatred is baked into parts of Islam we have no chance of changing.

If we accept the structural problem within Islam, we can face it with honesty. Perhaps we can’t change it, but denying repeatedly that it’s there isn’t going to help anyone, especially those Muslims who want out from under the control of the fanatics who are gaining the upper hand today.

Iran said Saturday that it downed and captured another “enemy drone,” the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

The incident reportedly took place during Iranian military maneuvers in southern Iran.

“IRGC’s electronic warfare systems detected electronic signals, which indicated that foreign drones intended to enter our country,” said Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Lt. Gen. Hamid Sarkheili, Fars reported. “Our specialist forces then succeeded in bringing down the drone in the field of maneuvers.”

And from NYT/AP

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Saturday that they had captured a foreign unmanned aircraft during a military exercise in southern Iran.

Gen. Hamid Sarkheili, a spokesman for the military exercise, said the guards’ electronic warfare unit spotted signals indicating that foreign drones were trying to enter Iranian airspace. General Sarkheili said experts took control of one drone’s navigation system and brought it down near the city of Sirjan, where the military drills began Saturday.

This has got to be the most sheepish, pathetic and ridiculous reporting incident in existence of digital media. The drone is not real, it’s a hypothetical one, and even the Iranians say so openly:

Iran’s IRGC cyber-warriors take control of mock enemy’s spy drone

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has successfully taken control of the mock enemy’s reconnaissance drone on the first day of the Payambar-e Azam 8 (The Great Prophet 8) military drills, which are being held in the southeastern province of Kerman.

The spokesman of the war games, Brigadier General Hamid Sarkheili, told reporters late on Saturday that the IRGC forces took control of the drone’s guidance system and managed to bring it down.

The IRGC Ground Force started the Payambar-e Azam 8 exercise, which includes practice maneuvers of various defense tactics, in southeastern Iran on Saturday.

Special modern warfare units conducted drills, asymmetric warfare tactics were practiced, and various types of unmanned aerial vehicles were tested on the first day of the war games.

So how did Iran dupe the world again? Well, they didn’t. There’s no minimum IQ test to become a desk worker in AP or Reuters. Even the original Fars piece claimed it was a mock drone, i.e. a make believe one, to test the IRGC SOP regarding “enemy drones”, during their military exercise where, you know, SOP’s are tested and reviewed with such hypothetical scenarios.

The IRGC Ground Force started massive wargames, codenamed Payambar-e Azam 8 (The Great Prophet 8), which include exercising different defense tactics, in Southern Iran on Saturday.

“For the first time, our special modern warfare task forces are conducting specialized operations,” Spokesman of the Wargames General Hamid Sarkheili told reporters, elaborating on the missions and goals of the drills.

Sarkheili said the IRGC forces also tested targeting hypothetical enemies’ drones, and used different types of UAVs in the wargames.

This is no Purim hoax, this is the sad and pathetic state of the MSM!

Take it from Glove and Boots, American/western news is crap.

Shateri in a happier, less dead state (AP)

Hassan Shateri, the Iranian general whose killing was reported last week, was actually slain last month in an alleged IAF airstrike that was said to have targeted a weapons convoy heading from Syria to the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Britain’s Sunday Times reported.

Iran was quick to blame “mercenaries and supporters” of Israel for Shateri’s death, although it made no indication that he had been killed in that airstrike. Tehran “will take revenge on Israel for the killing of a Quds Force general in Syria,” said Ali Shirazi, liaison for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force.

Shateri was a high-ranking member of the Quds Force, which is tasked with international operations, and was instrumental in Iran-Hezbollah relations, overseeing the reconstruction of Hezbollah’s armaments in the wake of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Sunday’s report said.

For Israel, he was long a “prime target,” according to an Israeli security figure quoted by The Times.

The report described how, despite the tight security surrounding Shateri, Israeli agents spotted him in Damascus and trailed him as he boarded the convoy headed for Lebanon, after which the air-strike option was utilized.

I’m guessing his surname was appropriate, given the state of his pants right after he heard the missile coming towards him.

Nigeria’s secret police said Wednesday they broke up a terrorist group backed by “Iranian handlers” who wanted to assassinate a former military ruler and gather intelligence about locations frequented by Americans and Israelis.

The State Security Service, responsible for domestic spying in Africa’s most populous nation, offered no details about who actually controlled and bankrolled the group.

But they will reveal these details if you send them your address, date of birth and bank account number.

He may have wished he didn’t.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Egypt has not gone so well, as he was lectured by a Sunni Cleric, mobbed by aggressive glad-handers, and had someone else throw a shoe at him.

There were conflicting reports about who threw the offending footwear, as a local Turkish outlet originally stated that he was “physically assaulted” by an angry Syrian citizen. Then Luke Russert said that NBC had a report of four Sunni Salafist men being arrested for the attack. Finally, a video surfaced that showed a shoe thrower not really coming that close to Ahmadinejad. It’s not quite the Iraqi journalist who launched two shoes at President George W. Bush at a press conference four years ago, but, really, everyone in this shot is probably closer than anyone should be able to get in public to a world leader with a lot of enemies:

Ahmadinejad was leaving a historic mosque in Cairo, where earlier he and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi met with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, who runs the 1,000-year-old “seat of religious teaching.” According to Reuters, Al-Tayeb, who is Sunni Muslim, “scolded” the head of the Shiite country for interfering in other Arab states and rejected Iran’s attempt to influence matters in Sunni-majority nations.

It’s not the first time someone’s thrown their sole at this R-sole.

But if the shoe fits…