An Islamic State-style propaganda video, released under the supervision of the Iranian regime last month, portrays a group of Iranian men destroying an American Navy fleet.
According to MEMRI-TV, the film titled “‘Steadfastness 2’ was produced by the Organization of Islamic Information, an office under the supervision of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.” It reportedly “shows the Iranian response to a U.S. attack in the Persian Gulf.”
The video begins by showing a little boy walking into the ocean to grab a soccer ball that had gone into the water as he watches a plane being gunned down by a U.S. warship in the distance. Bodies can be seen in the water, including that of a little girl who is wearing a red dress, an image which draws resemblance to the picture of a Syrian boy, “Aylan Kurdi” (whose actual name is Alan Shenu), whose lifeless body was photographed on the Turkish beach onto which he had washed.
As the fleet of U.S. naval ships approach the shore, they start firing at a group of Iranian men who are each holding a flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran while singing in Persian, “If you step over me, I will break your legs into pieces!”
With one blast of a cannon from a U.S. warship, the Iranian men charge will fervor into the ocean, Iranian flags in hand, and unscathed into the ocean waters. A huge tidal wave then manifests and wipes out all the U.S. ships and aircrafts.
The name “Vincennes” can be seen on the side of one of the ships, likely a reference to the USS Vincennes, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser that was used by the U.S. Navy between 1985 and 2005, and accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655 during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, having mistaken it for an F-14A Tomcat fighter jet. All 290 passengers on board perished.
A legal analysis provided by U.S. Navy Captain Julian Daniel McCarthy, who also served in a legal capacity for the Navy, points out that “despite the perceived lack of a legal duty, the U.S. offered humanitarian compensation to the victims of Iran Air Flight #655 in the form of ex gratia payments.”
The Iranian propaganda video ends with an image of the U.S. flag burning in the middle of the ocean and the group of Iranian men on one knee with the Iranian flag planted firmly in the sand.
MEMRI-TV notes that “the film drew the ire of a pro-government website, asriran.com, which stated that the storyline was ‘weak’ and that the video-clip was like ‘a ridiculous Bollywood movie,’ which, moreover, ‘ignores Iran’s military capabilities.'”
In February of last year, the Arabic language Al-Alam TV network, which is broadcast out of Iran, aired a clip of an Iranian missile sinking a life-size model of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz during a navy drill.
Among the missiles used to drown the model American aircraft carrier, described as the “hypothetical enemy” on camera, was a Fateh-110 (which translates to Conqueror in Persian) missile. The Fateh-110 is a short-range ballistic missile that was first developed by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2002 and that has a range of 300 kilometers, or 185 miles. The broadcaster notes that “these missiles travel five meters above the water to avoid being detected by radars in the area.”
After 12 missiles hit the model U.S. aircraft carrier, 400 shells “rained down” on the carrier for 15 minutes. The broadcaster noted that the Iranians stated that “this drill sends a message of peace to countries in the region, and demonstrates the naval strength of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz.
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