Sean Penn is in bed with the ayatollahs, as everyone, but especially the New York Post, knows. He loves evil Iranians so much that he had himself cut from a movie which depicted them negatively.

Well, specifically the movie was Crossing Over, that Wayne Kramer-directed muddle of a Traffic wannabe about immigration, for which the greasy Comrade Penn shot a few scenes as an 'enforcement agent.' The Post claims that Penn had his bits cut from the film because he objected to a scene that depicted an honor killing—an Iranian woman is killed by her brother because of some social faux pas. The claim, I guess, is that he didn't want Iranians shown in an unpleasant light?

What this has to do with the ayatollahs isn't entirely unclear, other than that Penn went to Iran in 2005 and did some 'reporting' for the San Francisco Chronicle, a known butt-pirate paper that Sean now hates. So, because Penn had the appalling audacity to try to use his position of prominence to explore a complicated issue, he's obviously an ayatollah-pirate Iranian spy.

For his part, Penn's people say that it was an artistic decision to cut him from the terrible movie, because his parts had a "mystical" quality that didn't really jibe with the rest of the picture's docu-feel. OK. So it was magic that kept him away. Muslim magic???

The delightful Post then goes on to accuse Sean of cheating on his wife with Natalie Portman.

Meanwhile, eyebrows were raised the other night when Penn dined with gorgeous (and single) Natalie Portman, "Milk" writer Dustin Lance Black, and two others at Tower Bar at the Sunset Tower Hotel in LA.

"Sean and Natalie were talking quietly," our spy says. Penn is usually circumspect regarding his behavior around hot young actresses, as he's married to long-suffering Robin Wright Penn.

Bless 'em.

Also: Don't you just love Andrea Peyser?