Honestly the only reason the Iranians are up in arms about this movie is that they haven’t seen it yet.
If anything the Spartans come off looking just as bad as the Persians. (Though slightly less like drag queens.) The Spartans in this film are portrayed as incredibly violent, and with little respect for human life. The Persians are portrayed as being a large empire controlling diverse and somehwat hedonistic cultures seeking to take over Greece. You end up rooting for The Spartans mostly because they are the underdog, and Americans just hate the idea of the big empire taking over the little city states.
But really neither group comes off looking rosy. In the movie Xerxes is an irrational drag queen, but (mini spoiler) the Spartans use dead Persians as mortal for a wall! How’s that for enlightened?
In the end the real cultural warfare is that the Persian people have been told what to think about a movie they have not yet actually seen.
