Director Dan Shadur's parents, Avi and Nili, were part of a multitude of Israeli diplomats and businesspeople doing business in Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. For many of these people, their years in Iran were the happiest moments of their lives. They enjoyed big apartments, substantial earning power, vacations in the mountains, royal dinners, and front-row seating at military parades. Of course, all of this was to disappear starting with the tumultuous period at the end of 1978.
The bulk of the film consists of frank interviews with former Mossad agents, military attachés, and other Israelis present in Tehran in the prerevolutionary period—several of them friends and neighbors of the Shadurs. Accompanying the interviews is wonderful 8mm footage taken by the protagonists themselves. These grainy home movies feature happy toddlers splashing in pools, young families cavorting in snowy mountains, and children watching with wonder traditional Iranian scenes like a village coppersmith banging away.
One of the most compelling interviews is with historian David Menashri of Tel Aviv University, who studied in Tehran from 1976 to 1977. In Menashri's view, the Iranian revolution was not so much a “yearning for Islam” as a quest for justice, one that has been echoed more recently in places like Tahrir Square in Cairo. The other interviewees noted the deep divides between the rich Iranians on the north side of Tehran with whom they spent most of their time, and the poor on the south side. However, most felt it was an internal affair of the Iranians, and one which they were in no position to affect.
A husband and wife argue gently about whether the Mossad actually created the Shah's secret police, SAVAK. In another scene, the former Mossad branch chief in Tehran demurs when asked who helped set up the Shah's nuclear program. In a further fascinating connection with current events, a former security guard at the Israeli Embassy in Tehran tells of a film festival in the Iranian capital where the most popular production was Raid on Entebbe. Each time the film was shown, the local crowd, gathered on rooftops and balconies, sighed and wailed when Commander Yoni Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Israeli Prime Minister, dies.
The same security guard tells how he noticed that things were changing. He and a friend went out to get beer and snacks to accompany the 1978 World Cup between Peru and Argentina. They noticed that shopkeepers were closing up early and then they witnessed their first of many protests. The embassy urged its staff to keep a stiff upper lip and stay on, despite increasingly desperate calls from family and friends in Israel for them to return home. Many of the higher-ups explained that if they were seen to abandon Iran at the first sign of trouble, they would never be allowed to return. The women and children were sent home first. Some of the men remained, even after the Shah fled. There is some interesting discussion about negotiations with the Bakhtiar regime regarding plans to assassinate Khomeini.
The final scenes deal with a few of the men who are stuck in Iran after the rise of the new regime. One, fluent in Persian, goes to the bazaar to get vegetables for his comrades in their safe house. A shopkeeper notes his accent and asks where he comes from. Fearing for his life, he explains that he's a representative of the PLO. Like Argo, Before the Revolution concludes with the description of a champagne party as soon as the departing airplane crosses into Turkish airspace.
This entertaining and informative film provides a valuable personal view of a range of Israelis who lived in Iran during the heyday of relations between the two countries and who experienced their rapid demise. It would be useful to students of Israel, Iran, or Middle Eastern affairs more generally. Despite the passage of over thirty years, most of the issues discussed remain in the headlines: the quest for justice in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, and the tension between authoritarian rule and popular sentiment.
