The Books Khamenei Loved but Others Shouldn’t Read

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
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The Books Khamenei Loved but Others Shouldn’t Read

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)

“Tell me which books you read, and I’ll tell you who you are!” That was how the late Iranian literary critic Mohit Tabatabai used to tease Tehran’s glitterati in the “good old days.” To be sure, the claim wasn’t based on any scientific study but empirical evidence showed that it wasn’t quite off the mark either. Books do offer an insight into the soul of a reader, provided he has a soul.

Thus, those interested in all things Iranian, especially in these exciting times, wouldn’t want to miss a new book on Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei if only because it devotes a chapter to books that he loved as a young man.

The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title “En Ma’a al-Sabr Fathan” (Patience Leads to Victory), but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title “The Drop of Blood That became a Ruby”. The “Supreme Guide” recalls his “passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels” and insists on “the deep impact” that reading novels had on him.

But what novels did the future “Supreme Guide” found especially captivating?

Top of Khamenei’s list are 10 of the cloak-and-dagger novels written by Michel Zevaco, the Corsican-French writer who helped popularize what the English call “penny-dreadful” romances in France.

Zevaco uses a simple formula: taking an historic character or event and fictionalizing it with a dose of page-turning pathos. Zevaco’s world is a universe of sex, violence, conspiracy and betrayal. In his best-selling novel “Borgia”, the head of the dreadful Borgia family that dominated Florentine politics in the medieval times, rapes his own sister Lucrece, a seductive blonde. The novel “Nostradamus” is a fictionalized biography of a roaming charlatan who claimed to read the future to gain money, power, sex and fame.

Zevaco’s most popular novels come in the series known as “Les Paradaillans” of which only two are translated into Persian.

Zevaco was an anarchist who edited the movement’s organ “Les Gueux” (The Beggars) and thus he aims at highlighting the corruption of European ruling classes. Ferocious anti-clerical, Zevaco regards organized religion as “the poison of the masses”. Some of his best writing is about the massacre of Huguenots (Protestant Christians) by the French King Charles IX under the influence of his shrewish mother Catherine of Medicis.

Khamenei’s next favorite novelist is Alexandre Dumas, another spinner of 19th century swashbuckling yarns, including the “Three Musketeers”, “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Twenty Years Later” and, the gripping “Cagliostro” relating the adventures of Joseph Balsamo, another charlatan in search of sex, money and power. Dumas’s work has less sex, revenge and violence than Zevaco, but the two French authors share many similarities, especially when it comes to fast-paced adventures and unexpected reversals of fortune.

Another 19th century French novelist is Maurice Leblanc, best known for his “Arsene Lupin” series about a gentleman thief who robs gentlemen, a classic of escapist literature.

Leblanc’s work shares two features with the works of Zevaco and Dumas. The first is the creation of an alternative world as a fictionalized double for the real one. The second is the central hero’s disdain for codes and norms of established bourgeois morality.

Khamenei says that he also read “almost all Iranian novels” of the period.

At the time of Khamenei’s youth, Persian novel seldom went beyond imitations of French novels of the late 19th century with JK Huysmans, Emile Zola, Hector Malot and Anatole France as favorites.

Because Iranian intellectuals disliked the British, none bothered to translate major English novels until the 1950s and, in the case of American literature, until a decade later. For the average Iranian reader, young men like Khamenei, France was the world’s “Literary Superpower.” Russian literature was also little known, again partly because of Iranian elite’s dislike of Russia as an enemy of Persia for two centuries.

Curiously, all the Iranian novelists of the time Khamenei talks about chose women as central characters at a time that Iranian women were still treated as second class citizens.

Ali Dashti’s novel offers a heroin named “Fitneh” (Sedition) who decides to use her charms to move up the ladder in a world dominated by men.

Muhammad Hejazi’s heroin “Ziba” is equally charming and ruthless in pursuit of a place in a world that tries to shut women out.

Then we have “Shahrashub”(literally: the disturber of peace in the city) the heroin of Hossein-Qoli Mosta’an whose appetite for sex is as keen as that of the main male character Aqa-Bala Khan. Mosta’an’s other popular novel “Rabi’a” also has a woman as central character, but is set in medieval times.

Jawad Fadil’s “Yeganeh” is in a different register, a romantic tear-jerker about star-crossed lovers. But even there, it is the heroin “Yeganeh” (The Unique One) who captains the wayward ship of a forlorn love. Fadil’s second novel, “Sho’eleh” (The Flame), also has a woman as its central character but is more ambitious in literary terms.

Taghi Modaressi’s heroin “Yakolia” in the novel of the same title is the most literary of the works of that period with the added distinction of being set in Biblical times.

The best-selling novel of the latter-end of that period was Muhammad-Ali Afghani’s “Ahu Khanum’s Husband” which launched a nationwide debate on the status of women and was used as material for a feature film and a television series.

Khamenei says he loved and cherished all those books. Ironically, however, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on a blacklist of books that “corrupt public morality and violate religious values”, established under President Muhammad Khatami in 1999. Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.



What Role Did the ‘Mossad-Tehran Branch’ Play in Operation Rising Lion?

People gather near a damaged building, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
People gather near a damaged building, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
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What Role Did the ‘Mossad-Tehran Branch’ Play in Operation Rising Lion?

People gather near a damaged building, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
People gather near a damaged building, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Just hours after launching its military operation “Rising Lion” against Iran, Israel revealed an extensive and long-standing intelligence campaign conducted by its spy agency Mossad deep inside Iranian territory, especially in the capital, where it reportedly established a covert branch.

According to an Israeli security source on Friday, Mossad special units carried out a series of covert operations inside Iran in the lead-up to the strikes. These included deploying precision-guided weapons near surface-to-air missile sites, using advanced technology to disrupt Iranian air defenses, and establishing a drone launch base close to Tehran.

The source said Friday’s operation was a joint effort between the Israeli military, Mossad, and the country’s defense industry, built on years of meticulous planning and intelligence-gathering. Israeli media, including Yedioth Ahronoth, reported that Mossad had established the drone base long before the strike, with explosive-laden UAVs later launched toward Iranian missile sites.

The attack reflects Israel’s broader, long-term strategy toward Iran, built on the combined efforts of its military and intelligence services. While Iran has maintained that the strikes were conducted entirely from outside the country, seeking to avoid acknowledging serious internal security breaches, Israel insists that Mossad played a decisive role on the ground.

The agency is credited with assassinations of IRGC and Iranian military figures, data collection on nuclear scientists, and compiling a high-value target list.

An Israeli security source claimed Mossad established a “branch” inside Tehran, planting surveillance devices across dozens of locations and even executing sabotage operations near nuclear facilities and missile launch sites.

While some analysts view these claims as psychological warfare or propaganda, evidence from past operations suggests a degree of credibility. Over the years, Israel has conducted bold, complex missions inside Iran that appear too sophisticated to have originated solely from outside.

Mossad’s activity in Iran dates back years but intensified significantly in the last two. According to Israeli sources, the agency effectively set up a wide-reaching operational base inside Iran, complete with advanced equipment and transport assets.

Mossad has been linked to the assassinations of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists: Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan - between 2010 and 2012 - most of them killed using magnetic bombs in central Tehran. In 2020, top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in an ambush attributed to a Mossad unit.

The most high-profile operation came in 2018, when Mossad agents reportedly stole Iran’s nuclear archive, including 50,000 documents and 163 CDs, from a Tehran warehouse in a seven-hour raid. According to former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who oversaw the mission, the 20-member team (none of whom were Israeli nationals) operated inside Iran for two years before executing the mission undetected.

Though Iranian officials initially dismissed the scale of the operation, they later claimed to have arrested “all the terrorists” who helped Mossad, blaming opposition groups like the MEK. However, Israel insists it relied not on political dissidents, but on individuals disillusioned with the regime, mercenaries, and Western intelligence support.

A retired Mossad officer, known only as Brig. Gen. “A”, told the right-wing Israeli group The Guardians that Iran’s internal repression and isolation have left it vulnerable. He stressed the close cooperation between Mossad, Israeli military intelligence, and the defense industry in preparing for the confrontation with Iran.

Operation “Rising Lion,” launched this week, included direct strikes on neighborhoods housing top IRGC commanders in Tehran. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described it as a “preemptive strike,” following warnings from US President Donald Trump about an imminent Israeli military operation targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.