Abhiroop Das
Co-created by Moshe Zonder, Daniel Syrkin, Omri Shenhar, Maor Kohn, and Dana Eden, Apple TV+’s ‘Tehran’ captures the beating heart of the eponymous city in all its shades, through the eyes of Tamar, a Mossad agent tasked with stopping Iran’s nuclear program. After the death of her lover, Milad, and her mentor, Marjan, Tamar is declared a rogue agent by her own government. Even when Mossad’s fiercest agent, named the Owl, is sent after her, Tamar continues to power through her mission independently. Over the course of the third season of this spy thriller series, she breaks free of old alliances and forges many new ones, eventually crossing paths with Eric Peterson, a nuclear inspector tasked with investigating Iran’s nuclear facilities. In reality, however, Peterson is working with the regime to make them a warhead, and it is up to Tamar to put an end to this project before it burns through the entire world as she knows it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Tehran Season 3 Finale Recap
‘Tehran’ season 3 episode 8 begins with Peterson and his team adding the finishing touches to the nuclear warhead. While he asserts that the project needs one more diagnostic test before launch, Larijani reveals that the detonation is scheduled for the same day. What’s worse is that Peterson is no longer to be a part of the project, and while he is escorted back to his suite in one piece, it is clear that Larijani plans to dispose of him once the coast is clear. Backed into a corner, Peterson uses his last resort: a phone call to his daughter that he knows is being tracked by Mossad. There, he talks not to his daughter, but to Tamar, subtly alerting her to his impending doom and his whereabouts so that she can interfere. Although Yulia strictly orders Tamar not to make any move, she is not one to listen with her arms crossed either.
Together with Ramin, Tamar charges into the scene guns ablaze, rescuing Peterson and killing the agents sent after him. As it turns out, the nuclear inspector is not their enemy after all, as this entire time he has been maintaining a charade to trick the Iranian government. Although he once truly did intend to give Iran nuclear weapons and even the playing field, he soon realizes that the regime was not to be trusted with such power. In order to disarm Iran, he was planning to secretly set a timer on the nuclear device and trigger an early explosion, wiping out the nuclear facility, and leaking Iran’s secret to the whole world. The problem, however, is that the timer is set to noon later that day, meaning that the warhead is most likely to be in the middle of the city when it explodes, and potentially kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Shocked by the implications, Tamar realizes she has two options: either escape the city and let it go to ruin, or disobey Yulia’s orders and disable the nuclear warhead by any means necessary. While she naturally chooses the latter option, there still remains one major problem. To trick any potential spies, the Iranian government has hidden the warhead in one of six trucks, all of which are tasked with coursing through the city. Only Faraz knows where the real weapon is, and to get that information out of him, Tamar uses Nahid’s contact number as bait. Realizing the stakes, Faraz obliges and sends the truck to an abandoned tunnel, where it is up to Peterson to disable the bomb within the last remaining minutes. However, when Faraz manages to get his hands on a gun, the power dynamic shifts once again, throwing Tamar’s plan into chaos.
Tehran Season 3 Ending: What Happens to the Nuclear Core? Will Tamar and Ramin Escape?
At the end of ‘Tehran’ season 3, Tamar teams up with Peterson to stop Iran’s nuclear test, outsmarting Faraz once and for all. Although all hope seems lost when Faraz gets his hands on a gun and takes control of the truck, all of this is revealed to be a part of Tamar’s plan. She knew the tunnel would disrupt the cell signal, prompting Faraz to step out for a moment to make his call. In those moments, she told Peterson her real plan: to not just undo the detonation, but replace the nuclear core with an explosive. Although the plan is made up spontaneously, both Peterson and Ramin pick up on it on the spot, letting the charade continue just long enough for Faraz to believe that he is in control. Beyond that, he is led to believe that the disarmament of the bomb is still underway, when in reality it is completed off-screen.
While Faraz claims that he is driven by his endless love for Iran, Peterson keenly points out the underlying truth behind this status. For Faraz, the state is inseparable from its regime, and to that end, he stops at nothing to secure the status quo as it has always been. Peterson works as the perfect foil for him on one level, that being their shared, growing disillusionment with the very thing they have devoted their lives to. When the nuclear inspector talks about losing his family to the cause, the statement is just as applicable to Faraz, the difference being that the latter is yet to accept it. However, it is precisely this vulnerability that gives Tamar the upper edge when it counts, and while she leaves the place just in time, Faraz is left to Peterson’s whims.
Ramin was likely given only a vague idea about the plan to swap the nuclear core, but despite that, he proves himself to be Tamar’s greatest asset in the process. Anticipating the arrival of both Mossad and Iranian forces, he sets out to figure out an escape route well in advance, and ultimately finds it through a run-down duct that leads back to the tunnel. While he has the option to run away by himself, he volunteers to go back into the battlefield and assist Tamar at the nick of time, which shows how much he values his allies.
However, getting out of the tunnel is just one half of their grand escape, as Tamar’s biggest challenge is now to leave Iranian soil and make it back to Iraq, all the while carrying a nuclear core in her backpack. There is also the added complication of her being declared a rogue agent, meaning that Yulia would be less than interested in giving her a warm welcome. Tamar’s arc this season has been one of disillusionment as well, with characters like the Owl showing her how her own system may be susceptible to repeating the enemy’s mistakes. As such, she now has to make a judgment call: whether to put her trust in Yulia once again, or make Tehran her definitive base.
Are Peterson and Faraz Dead?
Although Faraz has been able to keep up with Tamar’s stratagems for three whole seasons now, this final bout proves to be too much for him. As the timer runs out, it is not the nuke, but a regular explosive device that sets the tunnel ablaze, instantly killing Peterson and Faraz in the process. Although it almost feels like for a second that the nuclear warhead has detonated, Mossad quickly assesses it to be a regular, but high-yield explosion. This entire plan is concocted by Tamar as a means to kill two birds with one stone, as now she is both in possession of the core and free from her multi-season cat-and-mouse chase with Faraz. Notably, the explosion also takes out numerous Iranian soldiers, and although it makes sense for Larijani to declare this event a national threat, he cannot risk letting the world know of his nuclear ventures.
In a way, both Larijani and Faraz are caged by their own machinations, and we also deal with the thematic implication in the latter’s case. In their final conversation, Peterson accuses Faraz of doing it all to become Iran’s hero, the one who brought down Mossad’s best, and saved the city. While that may not be Faraz’s leading motivation, it is still a significant chunk of why he does things. At the start of the season, we see him get upset at being asked to leave a high-level meeting, following which, his immediate reaction is to take part in Tamar’s scheme of disabling the government. Pride is certainly a ruling element for Faraz, and, fittingly, it is also the one thing that brings him down. Tamar exploits his desire to win it all by putting him face-to-face with the very weapon that is set to take his life.
Unlike Faraz, Peterson actually sacrifices himself for the greater cause, not only ensuring Tehran’s safety, but also undoing decades of work Iran had done in the nuclear department. While on one hand, people like Larijani are bound to remember him (and Faraz) as traitors, the media will likely mourn him as a martyr. In reality, neither molds truly define Peterson, and only Tamar lives to know who he was and what he truly wanted. In his final moments, Peterson makes her promise that she will reveal the truth to his daughter, who has yet to read even a single voicemail left by him. While she may never forgive Peterson for abandoning her, we know that Tamar will stop at nothing to fulfill her end of the promise. As such, Peterson’s spirit lives on in the narrative through his final, undeniable act of heroism.
Will Nahid Leave Iran? Where is She Headed?
While much of Tehran’s finale is centered around Tamar’s game of chess with Faraz, it is Nahid who has the most transformative moment. After plotting an elaborate escape from her home in the previous episode, she finds herself at the same women’s shelter where Tamar was hiding out at the start of the season. Nahid is warmly welcomed into this found family of sorts, but the biggest surprise turns out to be the fake passport that Tamar has prepared for her, as a silent expression of gratitude. When the shelter’s leader asks where Nahid is headed next, the latter realizes that she doesn’t actually have a plan just yet. That, however, isn’t scary, but rather a liberating realization for her, as there is an entire world that she can now explore at her own pace.
From what we know of Nahid’s wants, she is most likely to make her way to Finland and reunite with her sister, who has been living a life of security and comfort, far away from the regime. For Nahid, this escape from the system functions on several layers, as her husband is himself an embodiment of both the institutions that have caged her for so long. Their dissonance comes out in the open when he essentially binds her to the house, convinced that it is the only way to keep her safe. For Nahid, this marks a reality check of sorts, expressed in the form of her final conversation with Faraz, where she breaks things off for good. While the two are still in love, their wants and perspectives are far too different to be reconciled. Echoing the season’s self-affirming theme, Nahid chooses a form of freedom that she must carve for and by herself.
