Iran continues to dislike Hollywood, it would seem. Actor Armin Amiri, who briefly appeared in the Iranian-flag-ripping movie The Wrestler, recently learned that his father was arrested in Tehran.

We had a feeling, when we saw this million-point headline at Drudge saying Iran will get a nuke during Obama's first term credited only to a mysterious "paper," that the "paper" referenced would be either the Moonie-owned Washington Times or the Murdoch-owned Times of London. More amusing: in order to stop the evil Iranians, the Times insists that Obama must engage in the direct diplomacy without preconditions that John McCain (and Hillary Clinton!) called so naive and foolish. A more reasonable assesment of the report from Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations is here. [Times via Drudge]

In 2005 Abbas Kowsari was allowed to photograph the graduation ceremonies of female cadets graduating from Iran's police academy, and his images are featured in the fall issue of The Paris Review. Any small note of progress in a repressive society is a good thing, but the import of female cadets pales in comparison to the awesomeness of these photos, staged by one of Iran's hottest rising politicians. Michael Bay may have a new property.

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone posted a chart showing the frequency of political keywords during Friday night's McCain/Obama debate. "Iraq" hit the highest rate of tweeting at a given moment during the event, followed by "tax" and then "Korean" after John McCain deemed North Korea "a huge gulag" that stunts its citizens' growth by three inches. But the trick to reading a chart like this is to look not at the height of the lines, but the surface area under them — that's how you measure the total number of tweets for that keyword. Iraq and taxes look to be the biggest. But Stone's chart shows Iran and Russia, not Koreans, are what everyone's tweeting about.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke in front of the U.N. General Assembly today. (We didn't catch the speech but apparently he said something about the "the American empire being near collapse," which, given the events of the past week, sounds about right.) Then President Bush took to the podium and Mahmoud responded by, in the words of one reporter, "jabbing his thumb downward."

Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee gave a speech today and got a lot of laughs when he said this about Sarah Palin: "People were coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, e-mails were coming in, 'I just sent money to Obama, I couldn't sleep last night' - from the left. To see this cocky wacko up there." Now, Chafee was never that convincing a Republican, but here's the thing: neither, for the vast majority of his career anyway, was John McCain. And if Palin energizes the Republican base, she's sure as hell alienating a huge portion of the John McCain base. Let's call them "Angry White Men With Working Brain Cells."* My brother is one; he used to have a mild hardon for McCain; this morning I got an email from him about some Palin nightmare he had last night followed an hour later by an email from the Obama campaign informing me he'd donated a hundred bucks. He is part of the niche that gets riled up not over the idea bombing Iran, or even dumfuckedly joking about bombing Iran, but becomes suddenly borderline rabid over stories like this (as told to Bob Woodward.)

"Tehran, Sept 9, IRNA - First National Internet Satire Festival was launched with an aim of identifying Internet satirists and supporting them, creating a sound atmosphere for competition and introducing correct patterns of satire writing." The Iranians are funny people. Don't believe me? Read President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2006 letter to George W. Bush. The guy is a master of dry: "Aside from the Middle Ages, in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime?"

Americans used to covertly sell weapons and technology through Israel to Iranian moderates — sometimes with Ronald Reagan's approval. Today, Iran gets American military technology from companies in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. Wired military tech writer Noah Shachtman writes: "The U.S. is the biggest arms-dealer in the world; soaring oil prices given Iran the cash to go get those weapons. It's nearly impossible to stop countries from reselling their U.S. weaponry to Iran." He links to a longer Mother Jones report on "transshipment." Got any info on specific made-in-Sunnyvale technologies that have leaked to the other team? Send 'em in. (Photo by Wikimedia)

Left: The head-turning photo that appeared all over the world yesterday. Right, the original photo. The New York Times, which ran the altered version, explains how the photo spread "from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards," to "the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites." We lucked out by running other photos for variety. (Photo by Sepah News via AP)

Iran has tested missiles! Not just one or two or even three missiles, but four missiles! Our crack intelligence agencies know this, because the Iranian military's propaganda arm helpfully provided the media with a photo showing-count 'em-four whole missiles blasting off into the sky. You'll regret the decision to build only three missile shelters, Israel! The scary, quadri-missiled photo of terror was splashed across front pages nationwide. Too bad it's a big phony!

Skip the politics, let's get to the tech: The Shahab-3 missiles that Iranian solidiers test-fired today — a blatant bring-it to Israel and America — could land a nuke in Tel Aviv. (The city's startup sector was recently dubbed the world's #8 tech hotspot by CNET, less than 240 milliseconds from Sand Hill Road and believe me, no packet loss from those guys.) The missile is based on North Korea's Nodong-1, an Iranian-funded adaptation of the Soviet Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein's troops lobbed at Israel in the first Gulf War. No, it's not true that these missiles are so old they use vacuum tubes instead of silicon chips. It's not true that their guidance systems are built from American GPS gear, as much as the Valley would like to take credit. What is true is that the Shahab-3's biggest vulnerability — a tendency to tumble out of control on the way down to the target — may have been fixed.

From Global Voices:

The White House sent a FURIOUS letter to NBC news. They claim they're mad at how NBC edited Richard Engel's interview with the president last week. It's all bullshit, obv. The details, transcript, letter, and video—after the jump!

Iran, that country over in the Middle East that we're never, ever going to invade militarily, has put the kibosh on some of our cultural invasion. The government recently banned nine celebrity and culture publications because they ran images of foreign artists, like actresses Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, who are "corrupt" and lead "decadent lives." Can't, um, find much argument with that. Though, of course, censorship is rarely a good thing, especially when the focus is on "scantly dressed" women and whatnot. And we've been so welcoming of Shohreh Aghdashloo! Oh, and poor Reese and Nicole. Maybe they should be invited up to Columbia so Lee Bollinger can make out with them or something. [NYT]

Iran is going to shut off the Internet for the duration of the upcoming election. Unfortunately this only applies to the Iranian election, and only if you live in Iran. [IHT]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is really really sorry that he hasn't updated his blog, guys! "Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations. So I had to decide how to spend the limited time that I have allocated ‎for the blog; should I write new notes or respect those viewers who kindly and ‎generously have shared their thoughts and opinions with me and sent messages and read ‎their numerous received messages." He'll have so much more time to update now that that Tehran nuclear conference is finally over, though expect posting to drop off again near finals week. [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Personal Memos]

Hold on to your pomade, the Islamofascists are coming! The ever-strengthening case for war against Iran became nigh-airtight this morning with the Wall Street Journal's front- page story detailing the Islamic Republic's latest assault on freedom. Religious police, reports Andrew Higgins, are cracking down with unprecedented brutality, denying Iranian citizens even such basic human rights as coiffure choice and manscape self-determination:

• NYT says "[Redacted], you [redacted] [redacted] of the CIA. Go [redacted] a up your [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] until it [redacted]." Ouch. [NYT]
  

A Swede by the name of Jonathan Lundqvist returned from Iran last month with a bundle of National Geographics, Economists, and Wallpapers purchased from a newsstand near Tehran University. Though these and other Western mags are permitted, they're heavily censored — moreover, they're manually censored, by government readers who go through each copy and cover forbidden ladyparts with white stickers or black ink. Interestingly, news stories that show women with bare arms, knees, or cleavage generally just get a blocky white sticker, while fashion ads (like Uma Thurman above) get ink jobs that keep the clothes unobscured. Some ink gets more artfully applied than others; Uma almost looks like she's wearing a black top of some kind. After the jump, less fortunate girls just get slapped with chastity-protecting boob blobs. Lundqvist noted that the newsstand stocked several mag issues that were quite old (these photos are from Wallpaper, September 2005); one wonders what the turnaround is on hand-censoring. (The newsstand owner was also shocked that Lundqvist declined to purchase some un-censored fashion mags from "under the counter.")

• Yet another Apple blog prints an "exclusive" tip that Apple will release an iPhone next year, combining the iPod with a phone, confirming other blogs' reports. But TrustedReviews also says a full-screen, touchscreen iPod will come out in December, sparking a Christmas rush and the soaking of many nerds' pants. No real product photos here, though. [TrustedReviews]