‘Tehran’ director talks about keeping savvy Israelis convinced spy thriller is realistic

As Kan released the second episode of the long-awaited third season of “Tehran,”  director Daniel Syrkin said an initial draft of the show had foreshadowed some of the past year’s gruesome realities, including Iranian rockets raining down on Tel Aviv.

“It’s just luck that we didn’t write that into the script,” Syrkin told The Times of Israel, referring to the life-imitates-art nature of the award-winning series.

The long-delayed season, currently airing on Israel’s Kan 11 before being released on Apple TV+, reintroduces audiences to Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan) as she uncovers new information about Iran’s nuclear program and begins to figure out who she needs to help her survive — and perhaps make her way out of Tehran.

Thanks to a crew of British scriptwriters this season, viewers also meet Eric Peterson, a nuclear supervisor with unclear loyalties played with haughty English charm by Hugh Laurie.

The writers began working on this latest season well before the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities, said Syrkin, but as the terrifying extent of the Hamas onslaught became clear on that day, “Tehran” producer Dana Eden quickly realized that it would be hard to release the next season as planned in May, some seven months later.

“I was very naive and I was in shock,” said Syrkin. “We all were.”

The planned May 2024 release was delayed in Israel until December, with the Apple TV+ release now slated to take place sometime in the new year.

While the Tehran-based show has always had a potent feel of current events, particularly following the last 15 months of war and Iran’s rocket attacks on Israel, “Tehran” is been based on the long history of enmity between the two countries, said Syrkin.

“People have short memories, but we have long lists of all that’s happened between the two countries,” said Syrkin. “I work things in as I think of them.”

Syrkin, producer Eden and the writers had no idea of just how strongly the Iran-Israel hostilities would resonate during this past year, as their proxy conflict graduated to direct confrontations.

Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles in April and October 2024, while Israel retaliated both times with airstrikes on Iranian military sites.

Despite the current tensions, certain givens in the storyline will always remain, said Syrkin, including elements of the nuclear race and the deep connections between Israeli Jews and Iran.

“We know so much about Iran. There’s never a shortage of material,” said Syrkin.

More than 200,000 Iranians settled in Israel after 1948, and following the 1979 revolution an additional 10,000 to 15,000 Iranian Jews fled to Israel.

For decades, however, Israeli citizens haven’t been allowed to travel to Iran as tourists and Iranian law prohibits the issuance of visas to Israeli citizens.

Given the number of Israelis who came from Iran and the two countries’ long and complex history, Syrkin’s goal is to make the show realistic for Israeli viewers and gripping for international viewers.

Syrkin, Eden and show creators Moshe Zonder and Maor Kohn try to keep most of the show’s action in Tehran, the capital city.

“Tehran is the true center of Iran for Israelis and Jews,” Syrkin said. “People ask if I was in Tehran to shoot the show; they think we’ve been there.”

This latest season, like the other two, was filmed in and around Athens.

Stock footage of Tehran was combined with shots of Athens enhanced with computer-generated imagery including Iran’s Alborz mountain and Tehran’s familiar Milad Tower.

“If Israelis think it’s idiotic, then it doesn’t work,” said Syrkin. “It has to be reasonable fiction for Israelis. It’s still important to us that the DNA is Israeli.”

Mossad dialogue and activity must feel realistic to Israeli viewers who are familiar with the country’s intelligence division, said Syrkin.

Syrkin, who was born and raised in Jerusalem and served as an intelligence officer during his army service, said he learned about getting to know one’s enemy, a theme that repeats itself in the cat-and-mouse spy chases of “Tehran.”

“When you know someone and hear their conversations, you understand that they’re people,” he said, “even though you’re discussing their moves and actions and contemplating taking them out. You respect them, and I connected to that concept in the show.”

He applies that thinking to the Iranian characters in “Tehran,” perhaps most significantly with the character of Faraz Kamali, head of investigations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, played by Shaun Toub.

“I don’t have to agree with him, but I understand someone who’s a high-ranking patriot,” said Syrkin. “He believes his dialogue, and I have to show that.”

Syrkin said his greatest compliment is when Israelis who work in the country’s security apparatus tell him that he succeeded in portraying real-life spy situations, showing Israel and the Mossad doing both the good and the bad.

“It’s an Israeli show, first and foremost,” he said, “but we also want it to be universal.”

Syrkin credits much of the show’s success to lead actor Niv Sultan, particularly her ability to speak Farsi, which she studied intensively before filming the first season.

“Tehran,” which is mostly funded by Apple TV+, is an audience favorite, said Syrkin. Viewers have been waiting a long time for this latest season, including the Iranian viewers who correspond with Syrkin on Instagram.

“They write me all the time,” he said. “They ask when I’ll visit them in Shiraz [Iran] and when there will be a season about the fall of the republic.”