BOOK REVIEW

A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran – Reza Khalili

A film-worthy account of espionage shines a torch deep within the ranks of the Iranian regime

                  Bluntly, I cannot highly enough recommend this book to anyone interested in Iran and the country’s transformation over the past century. This is the story of the pseudonymous Reza Kahlili, who was raised in Tehran, attended college in America, and then came back to join the infamous Revolutionary Guards, whose stated purpose is to protect the Islamic principles of the 1979 revolution. Once a supporter of Ruhollah Khomeini, he became so disillusioned with the regime’s harsh practices and treatment of potential dissidents that he reached out to the CIA for help. This action led to his employment by the agency as an undercover spy for several years.

                 Avoiding too much detail for future readers’ sake, one of the most overarching themes is the unimaginable internal conflict and paranoia Kahlili went through, though I actually found this wasn’t described as powerfully as it could have been: perhaps the pen of an experienced action writer would have fixed that. The most noteworthy sub-topic to me was actually Kahlili’s view on the divergence of his two best friends, the three of whom had shared a close bond for decades. One of these was a secular intellectual, the other a religious devotee. He recalls pride at how these two distinctly different individuals could stand together for change during the late 70’s, but as he maps out their journeys following the revolution it becomes evident that in fact his two mates (and symbolically, their ideologies) could not co-exist.

                 Though the book is prefaced with an explanation that the writer has been forced, for self-identity protection, to make revisions to some names and events, I only noted one clearly fictitious passage. I mention this because while several professional book critics questioned the book’s degree of truth, I didn’t find it any less readable and more importantly, a lot of what I enjoyed most would not have been worthy of alteration. This includes Kahlili’s opinions and thoughts during the American hostage taking, the Iraqi war and other personal experiences, such as his witnessing an adulteress being stoned to death.

                 One of my biggest questions as I digested the overall egregious actions of the regime in past decades was whether things have really changed since then, or are the tortures and massacres simply better covered up as Iran becomes more of a Potemkin state? At the same time, one of my greatest realizations is that the West itself is far from blame. Not only was there the disgusting coup d’état of Iranian PM Mossadeq in 1953 (nothing more than a wholly self-serving move to protect UK and US access to Iranian oil), the CIA also helped set up the shah’s brutal secret police, the SAVAK. These stand as just two examples of how, contrary to public Western opinion, there really isn’t a true black and white when it comes to Iran.   

-NP, Nov. 2014