New Season of Israeli Series 'Tehran' with New Actors

The third season of the Israeli series 'Tehran' began airing on December 10 on Kan, Israel's national television, featuring Hugh Laurie, known to Iranians for his role as 'Dr. House.' The new season was originally set to premiere in early spring this year, but following the outbreak of war in Gaza and increased criticism in the West of Israel's military approach, as well as protests by Palestinian supporters in European countries and the U.S. against Israel, media in Tel Aviv reported serious production issues. However, the prolonged Gaza war led the producers to continue their work, attracting prominent actors from Britain to Australia to collaborate. The first two seasons of 'Tehran,' which received global acclaim, encouraged Apple TV+ to invest tens of millions of dollars in collaboration with the Israeli network producing the series. The first season premiered in June 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and strict lockdown regulations in Israel, garnering significant attention. At the beginning of the first season, Mossad sends a young agent and 'brave hacker' named Tamar Rabinian on a mission to Tehran to neutralize threats against Israel. According to the scenario, Tamar, born in Tehran and having immigrated to Israel at the age of six, is initially tasked with neutralizing Iran's air defense radars to facilitate Israeli air operations in bombing Iran's nuclear sites. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the second season increased its fan base as producers incorporated events that were thrilling and reminiscent of the real lives of Israelis, such as the assassination of a senior commander of the IRGC via a bomb-laden mobile phone, similar to an assassination attempt Israel conducted in 1996 to kill Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker. The first two seasons of 'Tehran' depicted the dual lives of some Iranians alongside themes of espionage, thrilling intelligence operations, and forbidden romantic relationships in the Islamic Republic. The portrayal of ordinary people's lives and events such as youth protests against the government was narrated through the character 'Milad,' Tamar's Iranian boyfriend and a genius hacker. Milad Kahani befriended Tamar on the dark web without knowing she was a Mossad agent. Milad was killed in the second season by Mossad's design, leaving Tamar heartbroken regarding her mission and Mossad. The few details released in Israeli media about the third season indicate that despite her 'heartbreak' and attempts to escape from both the Iranian security forces and Mossad, Tamar makes a discovery that fundamentally changes the situation. According to Dana Eden, the series producer, Iran's nuclear program is the main subject of this season's events, which remains a primary concern for Israel in the real world. Filming for this season concluded in early September. Eden stated that scenes of an Iranian missile attack on Israel were written and filmed long before such an event occurred, and Apple TV+ executives liked them, but after Hamas's attack on Israel, a group deemed terrorist by the U.S. and the EU requested Apple to remove these scenes. In reality, the Iranian government did launch missile attacks on Israel on April 14 and September 2. Moshe Zandor and Omri Shinhav, the main writers of 'Tehran,' wrote the third season while continuing consultations with many former intelligence personnel from their country, and Dani Serkin directed this season as well; an Israeli director who learned some Persian for the making of this series. In the first season, Israeli and Iranian-European actors played roles. New Sultan, a young Israeli actress, appeared as 'Tamar,' and Sherwin Alnabi played 'Milad Kahani.' In the first season, Navid Negahban, an Iranian actor from Los Angeles, also played 'Masoud Tabrizi,' the owner of a tourism company in Iran but effectively a field agent for Mossad tasked with logistical support for Tamar and her contacts, ultimately being killed by Mossad at the end of that season. Sean Toub, a Hollywood actor of Iranian Jewish descent residing in California, also plays 'Faraz Kamali' in the third season. Faraz is a clever senior agent in the Iranian intelligence agencies who and his family are extorted by Mossad in various ways but remains loyal to 'serving the homeland' and is shot at the end of the second part. In the second season, Glenn Close, a famous Hollywood actress, played 'Marjan Montazemi,' an experienced Mossad agent with a double life as a Brit who lost her Iranian husband and owned a psychotherapy clinic, coordinating communications between 'Tamar' and the head of Mossad in Israel while being 'Nahid's' psychologist and explicitly threatening 'Faraz' with extortion. In the third season, Hugh Laurie, a renowned British actor, joins the series to play 'Eric Peterson,' who appears to be a senior nuclear inspector but is effectively a Mossad agent. The first two seasons were released during a time when Israel was pursuing operations against the nuclear program and Tehran-affiliated proxy groups under the framework of 'shadow operations' or 'war between wars' to prevent a larger direct confrontation with Iran. The extremist group Hamas's attack on Israel and Hezbollah's support for Hamas expanded Israel's actual operations against Iran in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran itself, bringing the two countries into direct conflict for the first time. According to Dana Eden, the series predicted many events that later occurred. Eden stated that work on the fourth season has also begun, and before the recent Israeli operations against Iran's proxy groups, the screenwriters had agreed to dedicate the fourth season to Mossad operations related to these groups, but Apple requested a 'rewrite' due to the significant similarities between the ongoing war and the fourth season's script. She claims that series like this have 'done a great service to Israel in the world' while Israel has shown that it is severely failing in persuading global public opinion in the ongoing war. Dana Eden, considering the predictions of some events in the series that also occurred in reality, says, who knows, perhaps the topic of the fifth season will be the reconciliation of the two countries and the beginning of a new era of friendship between the two nations.