The air was ripe with the fruity flavours of pomegranates and berries, while the sturdy mountains of Teheran were still capped with snowflakes. The flamboyant and modernist ruler of Persia, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi suddenly fled his vast kingdom in the face of emerging opposition from the conservative Islamic cleric Ayatollah Khomeini. Shah’s escape overseas marked the end of 2, 500 years of Persian monarchy in Iran and the beginning of hard-line Islam, and a revolution that was to plunge the nation into the throes of chaos and unrest. Why did the mighty Shah flee so suddenly like a deer encountering a hungry lion? Perhaps he had predicted the tumult his country would undergo thereafter…Perhaps he had gauged his declining popularity…Perhaps he knew he could do nothing to stop the spread of hard-line Islam and that of the Ayatollah. Was it his intuition? Or premonition? Or a vague hint about the conspiracy that was to transpire? Fast-forward 41 years and the winter months of...