Last week, in the era before Ra^thergate, several readers emailed this incredibly revealing story about the Tehran premiere of Michael Moore’s agitprop mockumentary.

In a nation that really feels the dictator’s boot on its neck, the audience knows, with the certain knowledge of the oppressed, why their oppressor is allowing them to watch this movie. But they don’t even see (or care about) Moore’s loathing for his own country.

They’re too exhilarated just to catch an unvarnished, uncensored glimpse of … America: ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ gets ‘axis of evil’ premiere.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Cinemagoers in the Iranian capital were given their first glimpse of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ this week, but appeared to enjoy more the rare chance to watch an American movie than its assault on their regime’s arch foe George W. Bush.

Michael Moore’s Bush-bashing polemic may have cruised through Iran’s unforgiving censors thanks to its indictment of US policy, but the premiere of the film also had the side effect of making some viewers relate the same questioning to their own state of affairs.

“The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good,” quipped one of the hundreds of mainly young people who flocked to Tuesday night’s opening screening.

The prize-winning documentary has been allowed out on release here to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States — which kicked off a chain of events that has seen Iran surrounded by US troops and lumped into an “axis of evil”.

“They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour,” said Hirad Harandian, another cinemagoer at the uptown Farhang cinema.