At a social event a few years ago, I was introduced to a former high-ranking official in the Obama administration—and when I say “high-ranking,” I mean about as high as it gets. When we were left alone for a moment, this person—who had been formal and reticent throughout the evening—touched my wrist in a gesture of unexpected intimacy, then leaned in to quietly thank me for writing the 2012 film Argo.
I was puzzled and must have looked it. The former official went on to explain that the film had proved useful in negotiations, when the administration was trying to convince Congress to approve the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the White House in 2015. A number of members of Congress, this person explained, had known nothing of the history of the United States’ involvement in Iran until they saw Argo’s prologue—a brief history lesson in which the narrator details U.S.-British exploitation of Iranian oil fields in the early 20th century; the C.I.A.-backed coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953; and subsequent U.S. support for the Shah and his brutal, torture-happy secret police. Understanding some of this history, I was told, had helped certain members of Congress come around to the prospect of a deal between the U.S. and Iran.
