Tehran S01E06: The Engineer

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'Tehran' sets up further complications in ‘The Engineer’ as the endgame approaches
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Tehran is called ‘The Engineer’, and seems mainly to be about setting up more problems as we approach the end of the season. As Tamar continues to pursue her new leads, we get scenes back in the Israeli war room of attempted infiltration that all go wrong. So options are more limited for them and Tamar’s dangerous plan seems to be their only option.

Tamar initially still has Milad on the hook, in a way that’s hard to tell how she really feels -- she clearly puts her mission first, but how much is also her own feelings? Milad offers to bring aboard Parham, a prominent engineer from the power plant, who has a sort of breezy personality while still making references to wanting changes for his children. But although Milad seems convinced, it’s a huge risk for Parham and his family.

We finally get a resolution for suspicious Karim, who has seen through Tamar’s tricks and confronts her in a surprise visit. Although Tamar is quickly able to defend herself and retrieve her newly acquired gun, her intentions to de-escalate are ignored as one of the local assets, an intimidating huge guy, simply shoots Karim in the head.

We actually do hear Tamar frustratedly complain back to her superiors, in a way that feels rational -- especially as we see after how betrayed Milad has become, barely responding and now potentially a risk. Milad is a believer in reform for his country, but does that also mean he’ll betray that country for a foreign enemy? We don’t know for sure, but that’s a good tension to set up for the final episodes.

When Parham shows up and refuses to take part in the mission, Tamar manipulates him immediately with blackmail to force him to comply -- this is the sort of thing that’s tricky. Getting someone on your side with trust like Milad is one thing, but now Parham has a reason to want Tamar to fail. It’s another good wrinkle, because we can see many potential ways that Tamar’s mission can fail.

On the other side, Faraz (now no longer technically on the team) still manages to sneak around and try to work towards both finding Tamar and saving his wife. Naturally he manages the same trick, which feels almost like the Israelis should’ve anticipated such a maneuver. We’ve seen only a bit with Tamar’s father over the course of the show, but Faraz is able to threaten Arezoo into tricking the old man into traveling to Turkey.

It’s juxtaposed with Tamar listening to a message from her father and leaving a message for him, right before he finds himself at a hotel room in Turkey. But Faraz is clever enough to mollify him with a Hebrew greeting, leaving things in a fluxed state -- is his move simply to get his wife back, get Tamar out, both, or more?

At this point it’s both sides doing unethical practices for their countries, with a lot of personal investment -- it’s the sort of thing that makes the spy games interesting, instead of rote and clichéd. Although Tamar is ostensibly our protagonist, the show does have her betray someone who has real feelings for her -- it makes it especially intriguing as there are only two episodes left in the season.

Overall, it’s another pretty engaging episode, in a show that’s been pretty good so far with the back and forth spy stuff. Considering how tricky and convoluted that sort of storyline can be, Tehran manages it pretty well. 

Tehran S01E05: The Other Iran

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‘Tehran’ accelerates with desperate acts in ‘The Other Iran’
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Tehran was called “The Other Iran”, which is sort of an ongoing theme of the show, the different aspects of the country apart from the mainstream or party line. The reveal in the last episode that Faraz’s wife was clearly kidnapped by the Israelis is not a huge surprise, although it’s quite a moral boundary to cross as she’s certainly not part of the security services herself, just an innocent connected to Faraz.

But Faraz, under the wire when confronted by his superior, dissembles effectively and seemingly comes up with a new plan on the spot, realizing (probably correctly) that the Israelis threat to his wife is likely an empty one. It’s a clever turn, one I didn’t consider, and Faraz attempts to turn Masoud into a triple agent, although obviously that doesn’t end up working out for either of them.

Masoud seems to be aware that his days are numbered, leading to a pretty tense scene where we aren’t sure exactly what will happen -- but it’s pretty reasonable from the Israelis’ perspective to kill him (in the morals of tradecraft anyway), as he is already compromised and could easily reveal sensitive information (even though he hadn’t broken yet).

Although now Masoud is obviously off the show, and while it’s good for the show to establish such high stakes in the game, I’ll miss Navid Negahban in the role, who was always a great presence here -- it just goes to show how much they screwed up using him in the Aladdin remake (along with all the other mistakes they made there). Now you do wonder the next move on both sides, as Faraz is still hunting for Tamar, while the Israelis have lost their vitally connected asset there.

But Tamar plots to return to the city soon, with the aid of her new lover Milad, who is ethically compromised in different ways. Although Milad represents a more progressive, freer perspective pushing against the legal restrictions of Iran, he’s also a drug dealer of ecstasy (at least), not exactly the most angelic job. It’s a good sort of twist on the idea, because Milad seems decent enough, although we really know very little about him.

© Apple TV+

 

Tamar has to go through her own little adventure, where we see her fail and succeed in useful ways to establish her character better. She may be well trained and fluent in Farsi, but she doesn’t know the culture perfectly, as she uses a “thumbs up” sign which is benign in many countries including Israel and the US, but in Iran (among a few other countries) it’s basically the middle finger.

She might even have realized that after the fact but was a bit too stressed at the moment -- but then again, Tamar was never meant to stay in the country this long. The rave presented some additional pushes against her, with her desire to always stay in control -- she had to sell drugs and even imbibe them under peer pressure from Milad.

Although at least we get to see her fight back against some big dudes as they “test” her for trust. It’s not the smartest plan to test her, but then again, these guys are drug dealers -- although we do see the leader spot Tamar hacking into Milad’s phone.

It’s a good way to setup the next episode, because there are a lot of threads left to unravel and a lot of unknowns -- Faraz might be an antagonist, but he’s not a monster, and Milad might be a romantic partner, but he also seems to be a bad influence. It’s a good way to keep us interested in the story, which is ultimately so far about the spy vs spy stuff, humanizing both sides instead of making it purely a “good guys vs terrorist” thing. I mean it’s no Ted Lasso, but Tehran has been pretty entertaining so far.

Tehran is available to stream on Apple TV+

Tehran paints a complex picture of an Israeli spy trapped in the capital of Iran

© Apple TV+

 

‘Tehran’ has something that feels like it’s almost at the point of something great.
by Jeremy Fogelman


Tehran is a new Israeli show on Apple TV Plus created by Moshe Zonder, who previously worked as a producer on the show Fauda, which was ostensibly a show about Israel-Palestine tensions and the people on both sides, although it often dipped too heavily into overly action-heavy scenes and a few too many characters. Tehran is far more focused, carefully introducing characters of import over time.

The show dropped the first three episodes at once, “Emergency Landing in Tehran”, “Blood on Her Hands”, and “Jasmine’s Girl”, so there will be spoilers for those three episodes here. The first episode is a bit of something with a “heist” vibe as we see a team of Israeli spies attempt to infiltrate the electrical grid in Tehran to allow a bombing of Iranian reactors. The main spy on the ground is Tamar (Niv Sultan), who can pass for Iranian, which makes sense, as we discover later that her mother fled during the uprisings of the late 70s.

At the same time, we follow the Iranian security service trying to figure out what’s going on and tracking down the spies, led by Faraz Kamali (famed Persian character actor Shaun Toub). Faraz is given additional depth beyond simply wanting to defend his country as his wife heads to France to get treatment for a serious illness -- the two have a complicated relationship because he must stay behind to address the security intrusions.

Tamar switches places with Zhila, a local worker at the electrical plant, who is desperate to flee and leave everything behind. We discover why, when Tamar is assaulted by Zhila’s boss and inadvertently kills him. So Tamar tries to get help from local asset Masoud (another great character actor Navid Negahban, who’s been in everything too) -- but gets into some interesting conflicts as Masoud is perhaps a more unethical sort than Tamar is willing to interact with.

©Apple TV+

Masoud is competent, but makes mistakes, as we see Faraz’s team slowly begin to figure out what happened. It’s always useful to have protagonists and antagonists with competence, and here although Tamar is clearly painted as the “hero”, Faraz isn’t painted as a monster or evil -- a good change from the “we’re terrorists but complex” people in Fauda.

The third episode adds some much needed complexity to the world, as we see groups of Iranian protesters at odds with each other, both convinced they are virtuous and the other side terrible. This has Tamar’s aunt Arezoo, who stayed behind in Iran and converted in Islam, willing to help her niece while Arezoo’s daughter accidentally catches Tamar at the protest -- where she was trying to be, but was unable to stop because of her hacker friend.

It’s hard to know how Iranian audiences are taking the show so far, but some of the user reviews I found online were mostly on the positive side -- obviously the show isn’t shot in Tehran, it’s all in Athens, so it can only so accurate in that way, but it also does seem like people appreciate how Iranians are not being presented as a monolith, and that even radicals aren’t necessarily about hatred.

It has a real watchable quality to it so far, and I like the kind of conceit it has -- “spy stuck in a dangerous world”, because Tamar must rely on her training and wits to survive and outwit her pursuers, who are capable too. It’s all subtitled (mostly Farsi and some Hebrew), but otherwise it has that tightly edited appeal and characters that are competent without being infallible. I feel like there’s potential to be something really next level, but for now it’s more of the “this is simply a fun watch with some complexity” sort of thing.