U.S

Investigating Russian literature shows that from Moscow’s point of view, the Iran-Iraq war was rooted in historical, political, and religious challenges. According to the Russians, geopolitical disputes after the fall of the Ottomans, the dispute over the Arvand River, ethnic Kurdish tensions, and long-standing disputes between Shiites and Sunnis are the four key factors that ignited the fires of the Iran-Iraq war. Meanwhile, Moscow had specific interests and policies toward Iran. Examining Russian literature shows that during the years of the Iran-Iraq war, Moscow made extensive efforts to establish a socialist system in Iran through influence in the leftist political current in this country. The Soviet Union which was deeply concerned about the continuation of the Iranian revolution within its borders, supported Saddam against Iran through arms, military, and intelligence assistance to Iraq. Also, looking at this war from a Russian perspective shows that the Iran-Iraq war not only did not limit US influence in the region, but also increased Washington's military and security presence in the West Asian region.  Hence, the Soviet Union, which had hoped to find a way to gain access to the waters of the Persian Gulf by exploiting the instability of West Asia and providing security guarantees to the countries of this region, failed to achieve its goals. The Soviets also imagined that the Eight-Year War would prevent the continuation of the revolutionary movement of the Iranian people, and that the Islamic Republic would collapse as a result of the costs and problems of the war. But the leadership of the war by Imam Khomeini (may God have mercy on him) and the unparalleled performance of the Iranian people and warriors prevented the realization of the Soviet dream of forming a communist system in Iran.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution marked a pivotal moment in the political relations between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in a “soft war” that primarily unfolded in the media, particularly within films. This study aims to analyze how the selected film, Septembers of Shiraz (2015), represents post-revolutionary Iran from a cognitive perspective. The Islamic Revolution is characterized by distinct signifiers, including anti-Zionism, the duality of the oppressed and the oppressors, legality, Islamism, republicanism, and the rejection of the United States. Rival discourses attempt to dislocate each of these signifiers to delegitimize the hegemon discourse of the Islamic Revolution. This analysis employs a combination of three theoretical frameworks and cognitive construal tools at the micro-level: Talmy’s (2000) force-dynamic paradigms, the multimodal conceptual metaphor proposed by Forceville (2006, 2008, 2016), and the metonymy-producing relationships suggested by Radden and Kövecses (1999). A macro-level analysis will utilize Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory to uncover the hegemon discourse’s semiotic system using the micro-level data. The results demonstrate that this film employs the repetitive metaphor of IRAN IS PRISON, the metonymy of MEMBERS FOR A CATEGORY, and the force-dynamic paradigm of the revolutionaries as a strong Antagonist/ the Jewish society as a weak Agonist. Discursively, the Iranian revolutionaries are portrayed as irrational, dogmatic, and narrow-minded individuals who are drawing their other-making border with all those who are not devoted to the Islamic revolution. Rejecting anti-Semitism, the revolutionaries’ irrationality, Jewish sacred suffering, and messianic redemption are some of the signifiers articulated by this film.