Made In Iran

I saw this on TV the other night.
For those who can't see it, here's a recap of the commercial.

In an average, everyday house and average, everyday man inspects his (presumably) belongings. Vaguely Johnny Cash-esque music plays over the scene. Everything he comes across is labelled with distinctly non-Made-in-America wording. Made in Mexico. Something in Chinese. Made in Malaysia. Made in Iran. One by one the man drags these items out of his house and dumps them onto his lawn. A woman sits in the living room and looks on disapprovingly. Who is she? The man's spouse? Mother? It's not clear. She knits. Until he drags her out and puts her on the lawn too. Finally he comes upon a rifle hung above the mantel. Stamped in (ridiculously) large letters on the barrel: Made in America. The man smiles and places the rifle back on the wall.

A lot of things struck me about this commercial. Besides its aggressive stupidity (buying something then throwing it out isn't really a boycott, not that that is the advertisers intended message), I found the Made in Iran bit quite interesting. Made in Iran? Really? Is Iran a big exporter of cheap clocks to the U.S.? Is Iran a big exporter of anything to the U.S.? I am pretty sure, in all my life, I've never seen a single item marked Made in Iran.

In spite of its weird and jingoistic message (sloppily delivered though it is) the ad did inspire me to wander around my house and attempt to determine the origin of ten random items. Just FYI, I purposefully picked things that A) I didn't know the origin of and 2) I assumed would be labelled. I knew the toothy, grinning crocodile head on the nightstand was from Florida, where I acquired it, but was likely not labelled as such, so I skipped that item. Same for my Maltese Falcon, which I am pretty sure was actually made in America too. (Take that, Malta!)

But I did look at the telephone, a frying pan, a peppermill, a plate (like the guy in the commercial), a nightlight, my laptop, a few other things. I did not check my firearms, because I don't own any. Here's what I found out: One item was from Taiwan. Three were actually unmarked. Three came from China, and one from France. The plate was from Sri Lanka. The frying pan was marked with Wisconsin, but I'm not sure that is where it was actually manufactured.

Not one thing was marked Made in Iran. Know why? Because most trade with Iran is prohibited. So why include this mendacious little moment in the commercial? Aside from trying to connect with racist, jingoistic douchnozzles who may be your target audience?