It can be tough for a left-thinking American to get any respect in Tehran.

You can speak out against the United States until you’re blue in the face, and you still get treated like a dirty infidel.

Can’t they see that you’re not some stupid flag-waving, Bible-thumping, Bush-voting, buck-toothed hick? Can’t they see that you’re a jet-setting artist, a sophisticated post-national citizen of the world, a member of the intelligentsia who always recycles, and that you want nothing more than to bring world peace by connecting cultures through the magic of film?

These sorts of questions may be floating around in the mind of Oliver Stone, now that he won’t be making a film about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokesman for the Iranian president “said that Stone had requested to make a film about Ahmadinejad”:

“We have already seen his documentaries - even though Stone is considered a member of the opposition group in the US, it is still part of the Great Satan,” he said.

Despite his ties to the Great Satan, “Stone is regarded within cinema circles in Islamic Iran as a distinguished filmmaker.”

But I guess Stone’s exalted status in Iran was not enough to overcome his most fundamental flaw.

No matter how great his talent, no matter where his political sympathies lie, he’s still nothing more than an infidel.

And these days, that’s a crime punishable by death.