- Tehran, the new spy thriller from Apple TV+,
follows Iranian born Israeli Mossad agent, Tamar Rabinyan,
who goes on an undercover mission to her homeland
to help destroy an Iranian nuclear reactor.
In the vein of the hit series Fauda,
the two even share a writer,
the show depicts complex characters, engrossing plot twists,
and most importantly, calls into question
the presumptions audiences may have
about the international conflict.
That real life conflict between Israel and Iran
is hardly a secret.
Tensions seem to be only rising,
with Iran routinely calling for Israel's destruction,
and Israel making every effort
to halt Iran's nuclear capabilities.
But there was a time when Iran and Israel
not only had a good relationship,
Israel viewed Iran as its closest ally in the Middle East.
Israelis regularly traveled to,
and even had secondary residences in Iran.
And Iranians loved the 1977 Israeli movie
"Operation Thunderbolt", a movie about IDF heroism.
How did Iran and Israel go from close regional allies
to sworn enemies?
First, a little bit of history.
Iran sits between Iraq and Afghanistan
and is home to 81.8 million people.
For centuries the area was known as Persia,
originally called that by the Greeks
as early as the fifth century BCE.
The middle east is a diverse region
populated with Arabs, Kurds, Turks, and many others.
Descendants of Indo-Iranian people called Aryans,
a term appropriated by the Nazi party,
Persians are one of those distinct ethnic groups.
For thousands of years Persia was ruled by dynasties.
That changed when military commander Reza Khan
came to power in 1921 as Prime Minister via a military coup.
Then he was crowned Shah, the Persian term for King in 1925.
Reza Shah's push towards rapid modernization of the country
included equalizing access to education for women,
and issuing strict decrees about modernizing dress.
And in 1935 Reza Shah changed the country's name to Iran
to reflect its people's Aryan heritage.
But these changes were sudden,
and rubbed those who lived
more traditional and religious lifestyles the wrong way.
Reza's son, Mohammad Reza Shah, commonly known as The Shah,
took power in 1941
and kicked the modernization of the country
into overdrive in 1963.
He instituted the White Revolution,
a series of aggressive reforms
that included giving women the right to vote,
essentially abolishing feudalism,
pouring money into education,
and establishing programs like social security and welfare.
As benevolent as these changes seemed,
The Shah was an autocratic dictator.
At his side was the Savak, an oppressive secret police
who ruthlessly persecuted would be dissidents.
He also instituted censorship
and was known to torture political prisoners.
So how does Israel fit into all of this?
and resulted in the Jews returning
to their national homeland.
However, many Palestinians
and others sympathetic to their cause
refer to this day as "the Nakba", or the Catastrophe.
Even though the Shah had secularized much of Iran,
the country was still strongly Muslim
and shared the rest of the Muslim world's hatred of Israel.
But the Shah was a realist
who was competing against neighboring Muslim nations,
and he saw a strategic opportunity
in the new enemy of his enemies.
As early as 1950, Israel had unofficial relations with Iran,
and continued to establish itself
as a prominent regional power
with continued military victories.
After the 1967 Six Day War,
Israel was desperate for an official ally
in the Middle East.
The Shah had grown to admire Israel's military
and was investing billions
into making Iran a regional military superpower.
Unlike other Muslim leaders,
he saw no problem with taking help from Israel.
Their partnership established trade,
strategic, and economic interests.
Iran supplied oil and Israel supplied weapons,
as well as knowledge in business,
agriculture, and infrastructure.
An Israeli construction company
even won a $140,000,000 bid to build a dam in Iran.
At that time Iran had around
100,000 Jews living in the country,
the bulk of them in Tehran.
Israelis living in Iran had it particularly good.
Some owned property,
EL AL flew back and forth daily from Tel Aviv,
and hundreds of Iranian Jewish children
attended Israeli schools in Iran.
The Israeli embassy in Tehran
hosted lavish receptions for local government officials,
and The Shah gave Israeli businessmen treatment
far surpassing the extravagance of even European royalty.
In short, Israelis felt at home in Tehran.
But outside Tehran was a different story.
Tehran suffered from a sharp cultural divide.
The north of the city was rich, educated, and modern.
But in the south, the people were deeply impoverished,
living in conditions that looked like a run down slum.
There was widespread opposition
to the corruption of The Shah's regime.
The floundering economy
left thousands of college graduates unemployed
and wanting social and political justice.
Farmers and other workers had been displaced
by technological innovation and were desperate for work,
and the religious wanted a return to Islamic values.
On top of all of that,
many Iranians perceived the push for modernization
as the uprooting of Iranian ideals and culture
by the US and the West.
This anger exploded into protests,
uniting people from across the political spectrum.
Anger grew not just towards the Shah, but anything Western,
with Israel and the US as the primary targets.
The Shah tried to suppress the revolts with violence,
ordering the military to open fire on demonstrators,
but his efforts to crack down
only galvanized the revolution.
Helping lead the revolution from afar
was the exiled radical religious leader
known in the West as Ayatollah Khomeini.
He had become an iconic figure
who, through his devoted followers,
incited protests and violence.
Khomeini returned from exile
immediately after The Shah fled.
The secular revolutionaries thought
when they came to power in government,
Khomeini would be content to remain a religious leader.
But instead Khomeini became the Supreme Leader
of the whole country
and established The Islamic Republic of Iran.
Israeli and Jewish families living in Iran felt threatened,
but the Israeli government feared that pulling out
would mean severing relationships,
abandoning property and assets, and losing years of work
establishing personal and professional networks.
During the most violent days of the revolution,
those who stayed behind became captives in their own home,
forced to flee in secret
and often barely escaping with their lives.
This terrible ordeal is the model for the backstory
of Tehran's main character, Tamar Rabinyan.
In the years following the Islamic Revolution,
Iran severed diplomatic ties with Israel,
turned the Israeli Embassy over to the PLO,
and instituted policies aimed at Israel's destruction.
And yet, despite their religious,
political, and militaristic animosities, in global politics
sometimes pragmatic strategy supersedes ideals.
In the 1980s, Israel and Iran had a common enemy in Iraq.
Between 1980 and 1988
Iran became locked in an enduring war
with its western neighbor,
all the while purchasing weapons from Israel,
with Iran paying Israel as high as
$500 million annually, according to some estimates.
But since the war ended,
Iranian leaders have resumed their call
for the destruction of Israel,
and have unapologetically denied the holocaust.
In recent decades, Israel and Iran have become locked
into what is called a proxy conflict.
Iran indirectly targets Israel
by supporting terrorist groups such as Hizballah and Hamas
that attack Israel.
On the flip side, Israel has carried out airstrikes
against the Iranian presence in Syria,
assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists,
and helped develop the Stuxnet virus
to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.
But, it is important to remember
that the citizens of Israel and Iran are ordinary people.
Though Israelis and many Iranian Jews had to flee Iran
and still feel a tremendous loss,
it's not all hatred between the former allies.
In fact, there have been several instances
in which the countries demonstrated support for one another,
such as when students refused to trample on streets
paved with images of Israeli and US flags.
And in 2012, a Facebook post by Ronny Edry went viral
and inspired similar acts of love across the world.
That down-to-earth humanity
in the context of international conflict
is what Tehran is really about.
The series brings the experience
of ordinary Israelis and Iranians to the forefront,
from religious oppression
by an Islamic fundamentalist government,
to the longing of Persian Jews
to be able to visit the place they once called home.
Honestly depicting the lives of regular people,
suffering the collateral damage of geo-political crossfire.
Thanks for watching,
if you like what we're doing here consider subscribing.
And if there's something
you wanna see us discuss in an upcoming video
be sure to let us know in the comments down below.