The Tehran Conviction

Tom Gabbay plots his most riveting tale yet: Agent Jack Teller had to make an ugly choice in his youth . . . and now, decades later, he and the United States must deal with the blowback. Tehran 1953. Jack Teller, a new recruit to the recently established Central Intelligence Agency, finds himself in Iran posing as a high-level American oil executive as part of Operation Ajax, the agency's first attempt to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation. Torn between loyalty to his country's policies and sympathy for the hopes of a fledgling democracy, Jack must ultimately pick which side he will betray. It is a decision that will affect the future of the Middle East and, eventually, the world. Twenty-six years later, in 1979, Jack returns to a very different Iran. The country is in the grip of a religious revolution, and the streets of the capital city are filled with daily rantings against The Great Satan. Jack's attempt to save one man from Islamic justice—a man whom he had, at one time, called a friend—leads him into the heart of an emerging struggle between the West and a new and dangerous ideology. Divided by conflicting loyalties, a young Jack Teller made a fateful choice that would reverberate for decades. In The Tehran Conviction, Tom Gabbay masterfully interweaves politics and suspense in a searing tale of espionage and betrayal that reveals the unexpected costs our decisions hold for us—and for history.