By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
(Photo: Apple TV)
Every so often I come across an intersection of art and life that simultaneously frightens and tantalizes. Such is the case with Tehran, an Israeli-produced series that tells of a Jewish, Iranian-born young spy named Tamar whom the Mossad has deeply embedded in Iran’s capital city, where she was born.
I finally got around to watching the third season of Tehran, which in this country streams on Apple TV (it was originally broadcast on Israel’s public TV channel Kan). Like the preceding two seasons, this eight-episode package centers on efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, which in season three is on the verge of producing a working fission device: i.e., an atomic bomb.
It was a peculiar sensation watching a fictional narrative more-or-less in parallel with real-world efforts to obliterate (or at least decimate) Iran’s ongoing uranium enrichment program. Indeed, the opening scene of the first episode – which features Hugh Laurie as the head of an international nuclear inspection team – shows row upon row of centrifuges, the apparatus tasked with producing weapons-grade nuclear material.
This isn’t the first time I had the uneasy feeling that fiction was morphing into fact (or is it the other way around)? Another multi-season Israeli thriller series, Netflix‘s Fauda, depicted members of the elite Duvdevan Unit, an IDF commando brigade that conducts deep-penetration, undercover operations in enemy territory. Its third season, released at the very end of 2019, has elements of Hamas infiltrating Southern Israel from tunnels beneath Gaza, followed by an extended mission to rescue a pair of kidnapped young Israeli hikers.
Leaving aside for a moment the relative plausibility of both narratives, there is no denying the close relationship between what emerges from the writers’ rooms bears uncanny relevance to what is actually taking place on the ground. Whether in the actual world or within a fictional context of Tehran, Iran is regarded as an existential threat to the very existence of the State of Israel. Nothing is more vital than preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Those stakes are anything but imagined.
Of course, both Tehran and Fauda are meant principally to entertain, not act as dry, didactic life lessons. Israel’s intelligence agencies, whether Shin Bet or Mossad, often appear to boast unlimited and unrestrained technical capabilities – calling up ultra detailed satellite imagery in mere seconds, tapping mobile phones, disrupting traffic signals in a busy Tehran neighborhood – both series are unabashed cheerleaders for the technology of Israeli spy craft.
From time to time, this breakneck pace of actionable intelligence gives way to consideration of a moral dilemma. Is it acceptable to potentially kill tens of thousands of Iranian civilians if a nuclear weapon is deliberately detonated before it can reach Israel? Will Tamar agree to do whatever she deems necessary to preserve her undercover status, even if her decisions result in fatal collateral damage?
Perhaps more to the point, the fact that Fauda and Tehran hew closely to contemporary headlines reflects the inescapable connection between actuality and the imaginary. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, when America was labeled The Great Satan and Israel The Little Satan, Iran has been the intractable enemy of both countries. In Tehran, Tamar’s principal antagonist is a high-ranking counterintelligence officer in the IRGC – the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Viewers in the US and Israel don’t need to be reminded what that organization means, domestically and abroad.
Indeed, successive assassinations of senior Iranian hierarchy, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – took place at about the same time I was glued to successive episodes of Tehran. The resulting overlap, inevitable as it may have been, was still a bit unsettling. Who would be the first to succeed in thwarting Iran’s nuclear program: Tamar on the ground or Israeli and American bombs falling from the air?
At this juncture, Tamar appears to have the upper hand. As of writing this column in mid-April, Iran appears to be hanging onto its stockpile of enriched uranium. Its capital city has been severely damaged by relentless bombing, yet the IRGC remains in authority, manipulating the levers of power with uncanny resilience.
Meanwhile, Tehran has been renewed for a fourth season, so presumably Tamar yet again will emerge as Israel’s deep cover protector. Perhaps she will find a way to prevent the IRGC from choking off the Strait of Hormuz. After all, next to uranium, oil is the region’s most volatile substance – on and off TV.
Andrew Adler is Managing Editor of Community.