Apple TV produced the first season of the series Tehran five years ago, with its third season airing in December 2024. This Israeli-American series merges Western production and direction techniques with an artificial Iranian linguistic and cultural context to present an appearance of authenticity.
When I first began watching the show, which is set in Iran and features characters speaking Persian, I initially believed it was an Iranian production. As the plot unfolded, it became clear that it was Israeli, modelled after series like Fauda or the American Homeland, and reproducing a familiar formula: an ultra-competent and hyper-rational security apparatus of a “Western” state that flagrantly disregards international law and finds ample justification to infiltrate and wage war on other nations both internally and externally.
The protagonist of the series, Tamar Rabinyan, is an Israeli spy operating in Tehran. She penetrates Iranian youth and activist circles while simultaneously falling in love with an Iranian dissident. The series skillfully portrays her as a deeply human character, emotionally torn, quick-witted, resourceful, and driven by a sense of personal victimhood. Yet, she acts in accordance with her “national duty” to neutralise the “Iranian threat” to Israel through recruiting agents, infiltrating Tehran’s top security circles, and brazenly assassinating nuclear scientists and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials (as later occurred in reality).
Each espionage act or assassination Tamar carries out is presented not as an act of aggression or illegality, but as a cold, humane endeavour. It is as if she is not killing people, but rather framing bloody violence as a poignant, artistic tableau and leaving the viewer with no choice but to sympathise.
The series implants in the viewer’s mind the notion that the protagonist is not conspiring or infiltrating to kill and destroy in secret but is rather embarking on a humanitarian mission to “save innocent lives.” Everything is meticulously designed and ideologically engineered with remarkable finesse.
The danger of this gripping series is twofold: it is more natural than its predecessors and softer in tone, while being more emotionally manipulative and far less overt in its aggression. It frames the Israeli-Iranian intelligence conflict as a high-stakes contest between two nearly matched apparatuses, always culminating in an Israeli triumph at the very last moment against all the odds.
Had the ruling elite in Iran watched Tehran with analytical eyes, or indeed watched it at all, they might have prepared more effectively for the Israeli war on Iran. What appeared in 2020 to be a high-quality artistic production is, in today’s context, inseparable from the broader political and military landscape. It may be seen as a tool of psychological preparation and the propagandistic groundwork needed to justify and promote Israeli aggression against Iran.
Israel’s recent intelligence, cyber, and air strikes on Iran, coordinated outside any framework of international law and based on unsubstantiated claims, were prefigured in the soft buildup provided by this series. The narrative of “preemptive strike” and “defensive deterrence” did not emerge suddenly alongside the Israeli assault; rather, it had been gradually disseminated and normalised over the course of years via an internationally streamed series, dramatic scenes resembling real life, and the tearful, weary face of a protagonist who resembles ordinary people in their daily lives.
Tehran was filmed in Athens, which was staged to resemble the capital of the “enemy” – namely Iran – and was set for destruction. We do not see Iran as it truly is, but rather as it exists in the imagination of the Israeli security services and as Mossad wishes the world to perceive it: a religious-police state that suppresses minds and spirits, a fearful or deluded majority population, a corrupt or extremist elite, and a regime hostile to its own society and to humanity at large.
Ordinary people, universities, football fields, cinemas, poets, and Iran’s famously vibrant political activism are absent. Instead, the show’s polished focus dwells on interrogation cells, surveillance devices, and the decadent liberalism of elite youth.
The series also gives a starring role to the Persian language, an intriguing detail that serves to “simulate realism,” while in fact exploiting the Iranian language and life for instrumental ends, not out of respect. Language in the series is not a vehicle for dialogue or mutual understanding but a tool for penetration. It is as if Persian itself has been conscripted to speak on behalf of Mossad.
This formula is not fundamentally different from what we have already seen in Fauda or Homeland. The former legitimised the infiltration and targeting of Palestinian society under the guise of anti-terrorism, while the latter reimagined American interventions in the Middle East as humanitarian and heroic endeavours.
Yet, Tehran, in my view, is the most intelligent of them all: it is the most professionally crafted and emotionally subtle, and thus the most dangerous. Drama here is no longer mere entertainment: it is a tool of global political engineering, redefining who is the criminal and who is the victim, who is the aggressor and who the aggrieved. It paved the way for accepting violations of Iranian sovereignty and the physical liquidation of Iranian officials in the name of Israeli security.
With the outbreak of the recent war, the function of such series, and the narratives they promote, has become unmistakably clear. Every element of the show from imagery to language and from music to emotional depth works towards getting global Apple TV audiences, of which there are many, to embrace the idea that “striking Iran is a humanitarian necessity” not an illegal act of aggression.
Why must we scrutinise and expose such works and confront them with equivalent tools? Because they constitute a covert re-articulation of a new colonial discourse, one that asserts Western moral, technical, and civilisational superiority in contrast to Eastern, specifically Islamic, “evil” or “backwardness,” even if the target in this case is Shiite.
Such productions condition global viewers to believe that international law is secondary when it conflicts with the “national interest” of a Western power, or, in this case, the Israeli occupying state, and that state sovereignty is dispensable if it hinders “preemptive containment of potential threats,” as defined by Israel.
These shows accustom the viewer’s mind and heart to accepting the legitimacy of violence if accompanied by stirring music, evocative monologues, and the internal conflict of a character torn between emotion and duty, only to finally choose supposed “duty” over human weakness.
Tehran is thus no accident – it is part of an integrated security-cultural strategy, in which intelligence agencies collaborate with Western production companies to create compelling, believable content on a global scale. In this scenario, art ceases to be a space for understanding, imagination, introspection, and empathy; it becomes a global arena for reshaping public consciousness according to the logic of brute force not justice or human rights. This is not new, but Israel’s recent assertive entrance into this realm is certainly striking.
What we need now is not only to analyse military strategy or predict the trajectory of war, but also to understand and dismantle the tools of cultural normalisation with unlawful Israeli violence, tools that increasingly take the form of stylish series aired on global platforms, that are celebrated in the media, and that are absorbed unconsciously by viewers who may not even realise they have internalised the full narrative.
Thus, as we read about and study the seemingly endless wars that Israel wages in its regional environment, we must also closely monitor the emergence and evolution of their imagined scripts on television platforms (and beyond) and how this “soft artillery” has already been launched at the hearts and minds of viewers around the world.
*The writer is a lecturer in global studies.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: