Iran: 'Western' influences over n*de actress controversy

An Iranian state news agency has attacked Golshifteh Farahani, the actress who posed nude in a French magazine, for slipping from the modest respectability of Iranian cinema to the vulgarity of Western culture.

Fars News Agency said that result of her decision to seek fame outside Iran was that she fell into the corruption and decadence associated with the Hollywood film industry.

"The actress who once played the role of caring and decent mothers of Iran has now auctioned her modesty and honour in front of the Western cameras," it said.

A photograph of Miss Farahani standing naked in a studio was published in the latest edition of Madame Le Figaro magazine. The publication has attracted a wave of visitors to her Facebook page from Iran and the Middle East.

The Paris-based actress left Iran last year in protest against restrictive Islamic codes that the Iranian cinema industry has to follow under Ahmadinejad's conservative cultural policies.

The agency revealed Iranian officials had been shocked by her decision.

"It was first assumed that this might be yet another plot by the enemy but the disaster dawned when she herself published her nude photo on her Facebook page," it said.

"By doing so she has now diminished whatever popularity of her that had remained in Iran. It seems that her action is a short film and in line with the Western plots to challenge the Islamic Awakening movement that is sweeping the region."

A second website, Sarat, which has links to radical elements of the clergy, published a poster showing Miss Farahani burning in the fires of hell - where it said she would reside for eternity. The text said: "Those who turned infidels have been misled by the despots who have managed to turn them away from the light and lead them to darkness. They belong to the fires of the hell and shall always stay in there."