27-year-old Ahmadreza Nouri has created a Counter Strike mod to illustrate the weakness of US oil exports that rely on shipping routes through the Persian Gulf, as pointed out by Ayatollah Khamenei in June. The basic aim of the game is to sink a US oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Gulf.
This comes in the wider of context of Iranian reactions to Western attacks. On the more obvious front, it is a reaction to US company Kuma Games’ Assault on Iran; in much the same way that A Night of Bush Capturing was a retort to the American Quest for Saddam. US officials reported a similar mod of Battlefield 2 back in May. But there is also the reception of the Iranian retort to the Jyllens-Posten Muhammad cartoons, when the Hamshari daily put out a call to test Westerners’ self-avowed love of free speech by a competition for the funniest Holocaust cartoon. Hypocritical? Us?