Connections: Insights Into Iran

There are no political controversies that stir as much personal anguish than those that involve Israel, or perhaps to be more precise, those that are the result of that nation’s policies and actions. My generation of American Jews, who are old enough to have been alive during the Holocaust, were brought up hearing the not-so-ludicrous question about matters of national and international consequence: “But is it good for the Jews?”

It follows therefore that although I was excited about the prospects for Middle East peace as a result of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran achieved by the Obama administration and a host of other nations, I became alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to convince the world — and the United States Congress — that the agreement was a colossal mistake that would lead to war.

It was in that context that “Off the Radar,” a memoir by Cyrus M. Copeland published in the spring, drew my attention. Mr. Copeland is a former advertising executive, born in this country to an Iranian mother and American father, whose formative years were spent in Shiraz. His family was living in Tehran in 1979, when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah and changed the course of history. As Mr. Copeland puts it, his father then came to represent the Great Satan and his mother, the Axis of Evil.

The story Mr. Copeland tells gives the lie to such black-versus-white simplifications. The daughter of a prominent family loyal to the monarchy, Shahin Maleki Copeland was able to attend and graduatefrom Georgetown University. In Washington, she not only met Max Copeland, whom she married, but Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, an Iranian student with whom she had a brief flirtation and who, years later, as the minister of justice under Ayatollah Khomeini, saved her husband’s life.

The thread Cyrus Copeland weaves in “Off the Radar” is a quest to learn whether his father was, as charged, guilty of espionage as an operative of a Central Intelligence Agency, but the book is much more than a spy novel.  Set amid the hostage crisis, and including a critique of the Oscar-winning film “Argo,” the book is a deeply personal account of the author’s coming of age as well as his parents’ lives. It is also a portrayal of an extraordinary woman whose passion, intelligence, and belief in the principles of the Quran allowed her to represent her husband in a revolutionary court, the first woman ever to do so.

In an author’s note, Mr. Copeland describes the research necessary to write what he calls an admittedly idiosyncratic book, and admits that he was reliant on his mother, an “exquisite storyteller.” He acknowledges that “dialogue and details have been reconstructed” to help create a strong narrative, and that “names and identifying details” were changed for protection.

“Off the Radar” is a powerful book because it also provides an intimate look at the minds and hearts of the Iranian people. What could be more timely? To the extent that a wide readership of it might help sway American opinion in favor of the accord with Iran — and damp down the prospect of military escalation — I would also allege that it is “good for the Jews.”