By Mathew Carr

In 2012, Hollywood produced an Academy Award-winning political thriller about deception, Argo, to show how the west screwed Iran.

Actually, in 2026, that George Clooney film has mashed with all our realities …and shows just how callous and misleading the mainstream narrative actually is. It’s been little changed for almost half a century, to be sure.

In the film, Argo (Ah, go fuck yourself is the repeated course joke throughout), the CIA rescues six American diplomats from Iran in 1980.

More than 4 decades later, the optics remain strangely very familiar.

Trump’s Iran war is causing massive inflation to steal the cash of 8 billion people on earth…on behalf of already rich people …who just want to be even more wealthy with no care about equality and sustainability.

Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, ***Argo*** (2012) is an Academy Award-winning political thriller based on the real-life “Canadian Caper” during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Gemini.

## What the Film is About

When militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking dozens of hostages, six American diplomats manage to slip away and find refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing the diplomats will eventually be caught, the CIA brings in an “exfiltration” specialist (Ben Affleck) to get them out of the country.

The specialist hatches a wild, high-stakes plan: he travels to Iran posing as a Hollywood producer and pretends the six diplomats are a Canadian film crew scouting desert / Tehran locations for a fake, *Star Wars*-style science-fiction movie called *Argo*.

Right now, Star Wars is playing out before our eyes in the form of the crazy SpaceX IPO.

Elon Musk is targeting a historic valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion for SpaceX in its upcoming June 2026 initial public offering. To achieve this, the company plans to raise $75 billion by selling roughly 4.3% of its total shares to investors.

We are all hostages to this shit as our gormless pension finds pile in.

Here, are just a few other examples of how the USA has been screwing the whole world for the past 46 years …and still now in 2026 … via this one film:

The press (the fictional Variety) tricked fictional Iran officials that the fake film was legit (even though it was not legit).

Fake war propaganda

The deception deployed in 1980 is now –in 2026 –being deployed in a much more sophisticated …and worldwide…fashion.

 

In the film, the press plays a key part in how America wins. See above.

Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO)

In the film they eat tacos.

Netflix’s captions are real. I didn’t make them up.

Notes by Gemini

Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, ***Argo*** (2012) is an Academy Award-winning political thriller based on the real-life “Canadian Caper” during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

## What the Film is About

When militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking dozens of hostages, six American diplomats manage to slip away and find refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing the diplomats will eventually be caught, the CIA brings in an “exfiltration” specialist to get them out of the country.

The specialist hatches a wild, high-stakes plan: he travels to Iran posing as a Hollywood producer and pretends the six diplomats are a Canadian film crew scouting desert locations for a fake, *Star Wars*-style science-fiction movie called *Argo*. The core of the film follows the tense setup in Hollywood to make the movie look real to the media, and the nail-biting rescue mission to smuggle the group through the Tehran airport.

## The Key Cast Members

* **The Main Lead Character:** **Ben Affleck** stars as **Tony Mendez**, the real-life CIA operative who masterminds the operation and puts his life on the line to fly into Iran and guide the diplomats out.

* **The Guys Behind the Fake Movie:** To make the cover story believable to international intelligence, Mendez enlists two Hollywood insiders:

* **John Goodman** plays **John Chambers**, a real-life, Oscar-winning Hollywood makeup artist (famous for *Planet of the Apes*) who secretly used his skills to assist the CIA.

* **Alan Arkin** plays **Lester Siegel**, a sharp-tongued, veteran Hollywood producer who helps set up the fake production company, buy a script, and drum up actual media press to make the lie completely bulletproof. *(Note: Arkin’s character was a fictional composite of a few different real-life producers).*

To convince the world—and specifically Iranian intelligence—that their fake movie *Argo* was a legitimate, multimillion-dollar Hollywood production, the CIA and their Hollywood partners went to extraordinarily elaborate, bizarre lengths. They didn’t just print a fake script; they built an entire fake institution.

Here are the most extreme steps they took to sell the lie:

### 1. The Staged Sci-Fi Press Event

To get major media buzz, they hosted a full-scale press launch and live table-read at the glamorous Beverly Hills Hotel. They actually hired actors to dress up in bizarre, elaborate, over-the-top alien and sci-fi costumes to read parts of the script for real journalists. The press had no idea they were covering a fake movie, and the resulting articles provided the perfect “proof” that the production was real.

### 2. Buying a Real Script & Hiring Legendary Artists

Instead of writing something from scratch, they bought an unproduced, high-concept science fiction script called *Lord of Light* and renamed it *Argo*. To make the project look like a massive *Star Wars* competitor, they hired legendary comic book artist **Jack Kirby** (co-creator of Marvel’s *The Avengers* and *X-Men*) to draw real, high-quality sci-fi concept art and promotional posters.

### 3. Creating a Real Hollywood Office

They established a fully functioning production company called **Studio Six Productions** (named in honor of the six hidden diplomats) on the Columbia Pictures lot. They set up actual phone lines, hired a receptionist, and listed the company in Hollywood directories. If an official from the Iranian government called the office to verify Mendez’s story, a real person would answer the phone and talk about the film’s schedule.

### 4. Buying Full-Page Industry Ads

They spent thousands of dollars taking out massive, full-page advertisements in Hollywood’s biggest trade magazines, *Variety* and *The Hollywood Reporter*. The ads proudly announced that principal photography for *Argo* was commencing. This was crucial, because they knew that if Iranian security forces checked western magazines, seeing official trade ads would instantly legitimize the film crew.

Suspenseful

In the movie, that bazaar is the setting for one of the most suspenseful scenes in the entire film. Here is how the story setting compares to where it was actually shot:

### In the Story: The Grand Bazaar of Tehran

Within the plot of *Argo*, the six American diplomats are forced to take a high-risk, guided tour of the **Grand Bazaar in Tehran** (often just called the Tehran Bazaar). Tony Mendez insists on the trip to establish a “paper trail” and prove to the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that they are a legitimate Canadian film crew scouting backdrops. The trip turns incredibly tense when a local shopkeeper confronts them angrily after one of the diplomats takes a photograph.

### In Reality: The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul [Climate talks are hosted by 

Because filming in Iran was completely impossible, Director Ben Affleck shot the entire sequence at the historic **Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey**.

To make the substitution seamless, the production team went to great lengths:

* They hung thousands of signs and banners written in Farsi instead of Turkish.

* They covered the walls with period-accurate 1970s Iranian advertisements and posters of Ayatollah Khomeini.

* They hired hundreds of local extras from the Persian diaspora to play the shoppers, Revolutionary Guards, and market vendors.