Protect And Defend

chapter 28
TEHRAN, IRAN

Secretary of State Wicka's remarks were met with extreme prejudice. Even Ashani, who considered himself to be far more rational than the other men gathered in Amatullah's office, listened with the long-held belief that candor was an extremely rare commodity at the United Nations. Wicka's first point, however, couldn't have been more accurate. Every time Amatullah ran into trouble with the people or the Supreme Leader, he would run to the nearest microphone and deliver a speech bemoaning the evil nature of the United States. Then for good measure he would warn of Israel 's impending destruction. It was classic propaganda through deflection.

The satellite photos showing the destruction of the Isfahan facility were met with snorts of derision by the others, but for Ashani they struck a chord. He began listening with far greater intensity as the woman laid out the facts. Facts that dovetailed with his own suspicions. The first sign that something very serious was about to be levied came when Wicka began listing the various dissident groups within Iran. Ashani's mathematical mind was geared to make quick linear progressions. He saw, in the naming of those three groups, exactly where Wicka was going with her presentation. He almost said something to Amatullah. A quick phone call to the Ministry of Communications could have shut the broadcast down, but something had changed in Ashani since the attack. His normal patience of playing along with all of the posturing and chest thumping was gone. It was as if a part of him now wanted to see Amatullah suffer, so he sat there and said nothing.

When Wicka announced the video by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the entire mood in Amatullah's office changed in an instant. Smirks were replaced with frowns and flapping mouths grew silent. Ashani watched as Amatullah leaned forward.

The Iranian president said, "What trick is this?"

Ashani watched the first words of the MEK spokesman with guarded interest. He knew firsthand how terrorist groups loved to take recognition for the dirty work done by others, because he had helped orchestrate such statements before. Many of Hezbollah's operations were deemed too controversial for them to take credit, so they allowed fringe groups to bask in the glory instead. The MEK was no fringe group, however. They had grown significantly in influence and numbers in the northern provinces. So much so that government units could not operate without fear of attack.

The words that came out of the TV were without a doubt the most subversive to be spoken in Iran since 1979. Ashani both feared and hoped that they would strike a chord with the general public. His fear was born out of the knowledge that revolutions were messy things with lots of innocent people caught in the crossfire. His hope was for his daughters. If only they could live in an Iran that was rescued from the bigoted, chauvinistic hard-liners. A third emotion entered his brain. It was amusement. Amusement at watching Amatullah's reaction.

By the fifth line of the man's speech, Amatullah was on his feet racing for his desk. He grabbed the phone and pressed a single button. Ashani could not see the number that was being dialed but he did not need to. He knew whom Amatullah would be calling. The Ministry of Communications. The state-run television had been told to broadcast Minister Saleh's address to the UN. They had been advertising it all day and were planning to air the lie-filled response of the American secretary of state. The viewing numbers would be huge, and the accusation that Amatullah and the other leaders watched pornography would not be received well. Ashani thought it was a stroke of genius. True or not, it didn't matter. In a society as sexually repressed as Iran 's, the accusation merely needed to be leveled and the damage would be done.

Amatullah began yelling into the phone, and he kept yelling as his eyes stayed glued to his big-screen TV. As each excruciating second ticked past, he became visibly more volatile. Finally, he picked up a paperweight and chucked it at the screen. It hit the protective sheet of Plexiglas and bounced with a thud to the floor, barely leaving a smudge. The intended result not achieved, Amatullah began cursing into the phone with renewed vigor.

Ashani looked back and forth between Amatullah and the screen as if he were at a sporting event. He had secretly wondered when this moment would come. With the war next door in Iraq the MEK had grown in both strength and audacity. For years it was his ministry that hunted down the dissidents and revolutionaries and assassinated them. In recent years it was his own people who lived in fear. The incidents were isolated to the northern provinces, but the tide was nonetheless turning. He had been warning Amatullah and the rest of the council that they were in real danger of the insurgency spreading to other provinces. But Amatullah and his core advisors were so blinded by their own plans to sow insurrection in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq that they refused to heed his warnings.

Almost as if it had been cued by a producer, the screen in Amatullah's office turned to fuzz just as the masked MEK spokesman finished saying, "With the destruction of the Isfahan facility we have marked the beginning of the end of these tyrants, and the start of the fight for a true Islamic and democratic Iran."