✍ Reza Thabeti, journalist

Two intelligence officers—one Russian and the other British—are sitting in a small bathroom inside a house on the grounds of the British embassy. The water taps are running and a radio is playing so that their conversation cannot be heard.

An MI6 officer thinks that Iran’s security services have bugged the house.

Ben Macintyre begins his new book with this scene in Tehran in 1981.

The book also raises again a historical and still controversial question: were the Tudeh Party and the Soviet Union truly preparing themselves for a coup in Iran?

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📸BBC/ Getty/ Courtesy of Ian McCredie/ Courtesy of Elena Alexandrovna/ Galina Kokosova Archives