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The hot Mossad spy drama Hedley Thomas is hooked on · The Front

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Have you guys watched season three by the way, Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: I think Headley watched them been reversed and its season
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: three two and then one again or.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah that must have been confusing.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I couldn't enough of it.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. It's hard to find a more high
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: stakes premise than the one explored in the series opener
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of Apple TV's Tehran. A beautiful, brilliant Mossad spy Tamar
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Rabinyon is sent into Iran to disable its air defenses
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  Speaker 1: so Israel's air force can bomb a nuclear power plant.
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  Speaker 1: But Tehran is no ordinary spy thriller. There's a humanist
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: thread that runs alongside the poisonings, bombings and assassination plots.
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  Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be joined today by a couple Headley
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  Speaker 1: Thomas and Ruth Matthews, and listeners will be familiar with heavily,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the Australian's national Chief correspondent and creator of podcasts like
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: The Teacher's Pet and most recently Sick to Death. Ruth,
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  Speaker 1: an outstanding journalist in her own right, now works as
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: an emergency department nurse. Like most couples, Hedly and Ruth
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: struggle to find shows they can both fall in love with.
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  Speaker 1: But these two expert storytellers are both obsessed with Tehran,
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  Speaker 1: and today they're here to tell us why. Helen and Ruth,
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  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me, And I was
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  Speaker 1: so thrilled when I found out that you two, just
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  Speaker 1: like me, are super fans of Tehran.
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  Speaker 4: Well, Ruth and I sometimes find it difficult to land
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  Speaker 4: on a show.
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  Speaker 3: Or a movie that we both like. So she loves.
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  Speaker 2: Horror thrillers, not necessarily horror. I like thrillers.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I find them horror. I can't deal with it. Claire.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: We watched Jurassic Park at the movies many years ago.
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  Speaker 2: When the dinosaurs came out, Headly hid behind the seat
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  Speaker 2: in front.
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  Speaker 1: Well, you must have a strong stomach, little Ruth, because
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: your day job is a night job is going and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: saving people's lives in the emergency department. So a bit
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  Speaker 1: of blood and gore obviously doesn't put you off.
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  Speaker 3: Don't mind that at all.
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  Speaker 4: So I'll usually prefer a program or a series like
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: you know, The Caurentline Madison with Michelle Faifa, but a
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  Speaker 4: spy thriller is somewhere in between, and this was one
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  Speaker 4: of those exemptary examples.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, forty seven minutes seeing communication with game.
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  Speaker 3: Do what you have to do.
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  Speaker 1: It started back in twenty twenty and it just started
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  Speaker 1: on Israeli TV, and then Apple TV picked it up
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  Speaker 1: at a time when I think Apple TV was trying
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  Speaker 1: to establish itself as a commissioner and a broadcaster of
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  Speaker 1: high quality TV. This is as high quality as it gets.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: Because it's clear. Take care of the package.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: There's no going back now.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Tehran and Israeli production is filmed in Athens for two reasons.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: The similarities between the Greek capital and Tehran are striking,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and Israeli is a band from visiting Iran. It's a
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  Speaker 1: theme explored early on in season one.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. There's a
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: safety percussion.
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  Speaker 6: We will be learning in half an hour at the
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  Speaker 6: nearest airport of Tehran.
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  Speaker 3: Sir, you need to take a seat, please please.
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  Speaker 5: Sir, listen.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Israeli, we are Israelis. We can't learn in Tehran.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: We have now please attend our seat now, no, no, go,
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  Speaker 3: tell your captain you've.
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  Speaker 4: Got We were reintroduced to Tehran when Donald Trump was
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  Speaker 4: saber rattling and talking about bombing it and then more
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  Speaker 4: recently bombing it back to.
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  Speaker 3: The Stone A.
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  Speaker 4: So, you know, watching the series and the plots and
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  Speaker 4: seeing how incredibly ingenious and brilliant Mossad agents could be
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  Speaker 4: in their intelligence and the operations they were pulling off,
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  Speaker 4: it felt like almost a proxy for the real coverage
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  Speaker 4: that was unfolding in the lead up to the war.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really really was. And I started watching it
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  Speaker 1: probably in about twenty twenty three, I think, and then
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  Speaker 1: there was a long gap after season two, before season
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  Speaker 1: three came out, and in that time the Twelve Day
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  Speaker 1: War started. Before I started watching it again back in
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  Speaker 1: June twenty twenty five, when Israel and the United States
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  Speaker 1: attacked I run in the kind of first round of
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  Speaker 1: hostilities that culinated in what's happening now. But it really
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  Speaker 1: gave me a whole different perspective on more SAD in particular,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the most storied intelligence service in the world
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  Speaker 1: that don't come out in a flattering light, do.
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  Speaker 3: They No, they don't.
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  Speaker 2: And I think it shows that you can have what's
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  Speaker 2: reputed to be the best intelligence service in the world
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  Speaker 2: and things still go wrong all the time, and I
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  Speaker 2: think it showed the flaws on both sides. There's no
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  Speaker 2: black and white. Everything is shades of gray minute to minute.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, in terms of moss Ad, I think
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  Speaker 4: it's difficult to imagine a spy service anywhere in the
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  Speaker 4: world more effective, ruthlessly effective than moss Ad, And you know,
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  Speaker 4: they were depicted in that light in this series.
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  Speaker 3: They were also.
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  Speaker 4: Depicted being ruthlessly efficient with their own assets. You know,
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  Speaker 4: if they had to expend execute people who had been
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  Speaker 4: helpful to moss Ad and to the mission, then that's
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  Speaker 4: what they ordered being done. And that was difficult to watch.
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  Speaker 4: How much of that is actually part of just the
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  Speaker 4: script imagination and how much of it would be true,
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  Speaker 4: we don't know, but it was fascinating to have that inside.
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  Speaker 4: A number of times will watching it, I thought, have
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  Speaker 4: they actually got great contacts at a high level in
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  Speaker 4: Mossad who have been able to give them a bit
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  Speaker 4: of a steer and ideas so that they've been able
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  Speaker 4: to develop this Because some of it was so believable,
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  Speaker 4: and while we can look at it and say, well,
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  Speaker 4: oh that looks far fairt or that intelligence operation was
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  Speaker 4: so advanced.
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  Speaker 3: How could they pulled that off?
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  Speaker 4: But we know from recent history when the Israeli intelligence
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  Speaker 4: services developed those exploding pages which took out so many
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  Speaker 4: of Israel's enemies just in the past eighteen months, that
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  Speaker 4: they are capable of just about anything.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, the combination of this unbelievably sophisticated system that they
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  Speaker 1: have where they can basically surveil any place into and
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  Speaker 1: we know that that's true because when they were assassinating
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  Speaker 1: the Aetola at the beginning of this round of conflict,
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  Speaker 1: they switched all the traffic signals in Tehran to make
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  Speaker 1: sure that they could ensure that he was where they
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  Speaker 1: needed him to be at the time. So we see
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  Speaker 1: them hovering above really metaphorically and literally with drone vision
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  Speaker 1: of everything that's going on, and then also some quite
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  Speaker 1: kind of nuts and bolts, almost Cold war type espionage stuff,
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  Speaker 1: you know, a bit like the pages and the walkie talkies.
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  Speaker 1: You know, they're literally blowing up devices or inserting explosives
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  Speaker 1: in things or tamar that the heroine is jumping over
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  Speaker 1: walls and sprinting around shipping containers. You know, it's an
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  Speaker 1: amazingly I think sophisticated, nuanced portrayal of what modern day
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  Speaker 1: intelligence is like. Like with all the sophisticated equipment in
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  Speaker 1: the world, it's still requires some pretty old fashioned trade craft.
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  Speaker 1: And she is so compelling, isn't she?
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  Speaker 2: She absolutely is. And can I say how nice it
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  Speaker 2: is to see a brown female protagonist who's the hero
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  Speaker 2: in something. How rarely is that scene? And she's got
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  Speaker 2: so much passion and warmth. She's young, she goes with
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  Speaker 2: her guart her instinct. It's great to watch.
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  Speaker 5: She's as bad as girl.
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  Speaker 1: This is actress nv Sultan talking about her character Tamar,
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  Speaker 1: and now.
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  Speaker 3: She's duck into her running for her life.
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  Speaker 1: But she never gives up. She never quits.
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  Speaker 3: She keeps trying to fill her mission in many kinds
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  Speaker 3: of ways.
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  Speaker 4: But you also see the shifting loyalties on both sides.
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  Speaker 4: So on the Iranian side, the very loving wife of
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  Speaker 4: the Iranian spy controller and her determination to forge her
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  Speaker 4: own life free from a wicked regime while her husband
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  Speaker 4: is helping to prop it up.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a real thread of feminine liberation. I think
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  Speaker 1: through it. The wife of the spymaster for US Kamali
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  Speaker 1: is Nahid, who is desperate to be free. She wants
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  Speaker 1: to get out. Clearly she doesn't like the restrictions that
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  Speaker 1: are imposed on her life. You see her coming home
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  Speaker 1: and taking off her head dress and relaxing in her
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  Speaker 1: home and being an equal to her husband. They have
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  Speaker 1: this really fascinating marriage, don't they. Even though he's a
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  Speaker 1: senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Court, he's the
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  Speaker 1: epitome of what now we've come to regard as the enemy.
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  Speaker 1: This is the organization that was blowing up businesses in
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  Speaker 1: Sydney last year according to the Australian government. And yet
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  Speaker 1: he is this very sophisticated patriot and she is a
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  Speaker 1: also very patriotic person who seems to love Iran and
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  Speaker 1: Persian culture but hates the regime. What an amazing setup.
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  Speaker 1: At the center of the story and out.
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  Speaker 4: Of the woodwork, you have Iranians who are trying to
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  Speaker 4: help the israel side. So they are living in Tehran
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  Speaker 4: and they are working for the Israelis secretly, covertly to
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  Speaker 4: help them complete their mission. And just over recent weeks
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  Speaker 4: and months we have seen news of the executions in
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  Speaker 4: Tehran by the Iranian authorities of suspected sympathizers, people who
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  Speaker 4: are spying.
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  Speaker 3: On Iran on behalf of Israel.
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  Speaker 4: And it's another way this feels so true to life
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  Speaker 4: in the same way that the central premise of this
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  Speaker 4: program is about a mission, a mission to obliterate Iran's
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  Speaker 4: nuclear capability to destroy any chance that Iran has to
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  Speaker 4: take Israel off the map with a nuclear weapon. And
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  Speaker 4: how true to life that is now based on one
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  Speaker 4: of the stated premises of the current war.
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  Speaker 1: What did you think, Ruth, of the kind of storytelling
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  Speaker 1: arc of it. We see to go into Iran disguised
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: as a flight attendant. At the very beginning, she's smoking hot,
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  Speaker 1: insanely beautiful, you know, very brave, brilliant coder. But her
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  Speaker 1: cover is blown straight away and suddenly she's on the
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  Speaker 1: streets fighting for herself. And then Mossad turns on her
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  Speaker 1: as well, and she kind of has to try and
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  Speaker 1: make her own way through the Iranian community. She has
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  Speaker 1: Iranian Jewish heritage, and so she goes to make contact
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  Speaker 1: with the Iranian Jewish community.
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  Speaker 3: I needrew help. She's always looking through people, questioning everyone here.
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  Speaker 1: I watched it with my husband, who at various points
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  Speaker 1: was kind of huffing and puffing and saying it was
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  Speaker 1: all too unbelievable to be true. What did you think?
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  Speaker 1: Did you find it credible?
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  Speaker 2: I thought it was so compelling because as we go
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  Speaker 2: into the story arc, you see much more of the humanity,
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  Speaker 2: not only of Tamara, but of everyone around her. And
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  Speaker 2: it's not just as Heavily was saying, the people within
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  Speaker 2: Iran helping the Israelis. It's people within Mossad who are
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  Speaker 2: actually agents for Iran. As with Tamar's initial handler, who
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  Speaker 2: turns out to be a lover of one of the
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  Speaker 2: top generals in the IIGC. The SAMs are shifting under
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  Speaker 2: your feet all the way through all the three series,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: and you just can't believe the allegiances because they might
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  Speaker 2: be changing in the next episode.
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  Speaker 1: It really leans into the dissident community in Iran, doesn't it.
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  Speaker 1: Tamar infiltrates the hacker community of a young, idealistic university
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  Speaker 1: students who are trying to bring down the regime, try
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  Speaker 1: to work against it, but who are also very patriotic
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  Speaker 1: in their own way. It's heartbreaking some of the choices
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  Speaker 1: she has to make, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: There's so much humanity and passion in there, even for
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  Speaker 2: us Headly sees him as the villain I see him
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  Speaker 2: as someone who's brought up within that system, but has
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  Speaker 2: principles and loves his wife, wants to do right for
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  Speaker 2: his wife, is swayed when he sees the system that
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  Speaker 2: he has been brought up to support and love at
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  Speaker 2: odds with his principles.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: The Tehran team were dealt a heavy blow earlier this
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: year when show producer and co creator Dana Eden was
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: found dead in her Athens hotel room. Eden was in
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  Speaker 1: Greece overseeing the production of season four of the series.
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  Speaker 1: She was fifty two years old. Eden's death was ruled
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: a suicide by local authorities, though rumors swirled online pointing
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to a criminal or nationalist involvement. Eden's company, Donna and
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  Speaker 1: Schuler Productions, issued a statement clarifying the rumors were unfounded
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and pleading for the media and the public to act
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: with responsibility and sensitivity. Here's Dana Eden accepting the twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty one Emmy for Best Drama Series.
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  Speaker 6: I wanted to say that Tehran is not only an
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: espeonade series. It's also about understanding the human behind your enemy,
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  Speaker 6: and I hope that both of that we can walk together.
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  Speaker 6: The Iranians and the Israelis in Jerusalem and in Tehran
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  Speaker 6: as friends.
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: And monitoring Uranian refinement levels.
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  Speaker 3: As you can see, we are within the permitted limit.
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  Speaker 5: Thank you, don't tell me how to do my job.
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  Speaker 1: British actor she Laurie, who stars in season three of Tehran,
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  Speaker 1: mourned the death of Eden on X, saying it's a
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  Speaker 1: terrible thing. She was brilliant and funny and an exceptional leader.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Love and condolences to all who knew her. Among the
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: sympathetic responses and anti the Israeli sentiment bubbled to the surface,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: with some users labeling Laurie a Zionist. Lurie hit back
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: saying quote, nothing I have ever said or done could
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: lead a sane person to believe that I'm a Zionist. However,
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  Speaker 1: if someone exalts in the death of a friend of mine,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: yes I will block them. If you wouldn't do the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: same in my position, you can fuck off too. Laurie
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  Speaker 1: then appeared to preempt being labeled an anti Zionist, saying quote,
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  Speaker 1: God Almighty, why does no one understand English anymore? I
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: have not spoken or written a word that would indicate
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: pro or anti Zionism. That's what those words mean. Blimey
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  Speaker 1: end quote. It's not surprising that a conversation on social
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: media would turn so simplistic and stupid. And it's the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: opposite of what Tehran attempts, and I think achieves a sophisticated,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: empathetic consideration of the modern Middle East in all its
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: complexity and contradiction.
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  Speaker 4: I found myself watching it and just hoping, praying that
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: one day I could go and live in Israel and Tehran,
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: or at least spend extended periods there. I was texting
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: an Iranian friend while watching it, and I said, mate,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: you must have watched Tehran.
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  Speaker 3: What did you think? And he said, oh, it's unbelievable.
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  Speaker 3: It's so true.
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  Speaker 4: And everyone in his community, the Iranian Australian community of
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: friends that he has, were all.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Over it too.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: They loved it and couldn't, at least to me, he
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: couldn't really fault it.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Helen and Ruth, thank you very much, and I hope
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: you're as excited as me about the forthcoming season four.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely wait.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Although I think that it might be like House of Cards,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: reality just gets so much crazier than fiction.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump might have a cameo.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks guys. Headley Thomas is the Australian National Chief Correspondent.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: His most recent investigative podcast series, Sick to Death, is
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: live now and you can read his work anytime at
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au. This episode of the
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey and co produced
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: with Jasper League. Thanks for joining us on the Front
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: this week. Our team also includes Kristin amiot Leat Sammaglue,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Tiffany Dimac and Joshua Burton.