Get a load of this: Iran is now saying that unless Hollywood -- and I think they mean the visiting dignitaries in the story below -- apologizes for the way in which it has portrayed Iran, it will not grant Iranian filmmakers the right to meet with them.

The art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged a visiting Hollywood delegation to apologise for "insults and slanders" about Iranians in films, the ISNA news agency reported on Saturday.

"(Iranian) cinema officials will only have the right to have official sessions with... Hollywood movie makers when they apologise to the Iranians for their 30 years of insults and slanders," Javad Shamaghdari said.

"The Iranian people and our revolution has been repeatedly unjustly attacked by Hollywood," he said, citing '300' and recent Oscar nominated movie 'The Wrestler' as among offending films.

In 2007, the war epic '300', a smash hit in the United States for its gory portrayal of the Greco-Persian wars, drew the wrath of Iranians for showing their ancestors as bloodthirsty.

Similarly 'The Wrestler', was booed in Iran and heavily criticised for the scene of breaking and tearing of the Iranian flag by the picture's star, 2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke.

I loved 300.

And here's a bulletin for Mahmoud: The Persian Empire didn't grow to the size it did because they were giving out Little Debbie cakes to the countries it invaded. Ditto its modern incarnation under Shi'a Islam. Read Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War, Victor Davis Hanson's A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, and Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam to understand that we have not a fucking thing to apologize for.

Hollywood team in Iran on cultural exchange.