The Iranian Woman Paperback – March 21, 2026

A woman arrives in Washington to avenge a crime buried in one of the Cold War’s darkest covert operations.In 1981, after Iran released the American hostages and diplomatic tensions began to ease, Shari, an Iranian exile in Paris, still striking in her fifties, boards a plane to Washington, D.C. Disguised in a hijab and chador, she carries a deadly mission: to take revenge on the man who destroyed her life.Nearly three decades earlier, during Iran’s violent 1953 coup d’état, a CIA operative murdered her fiancé, Essy, and brutally assaulted her. His name was Frank Taft, Essy’s childhood friend. For years she believed Essy’s death had been a tragic accident—until she uncovered the truth: Taft had orchestrated it. That’s when something inside her snapped.Now the CIA’s deputy director, Taft seems untouchable. But Shari burns with the fire of revenge.She poisons his drink.Taft fights for his life with his most effective weapon—manipulation. He offers a carefully crafted version of events, hoping to obtain the antidote… and kill her.The Iranian Woman is a gripping tale of espionage, love, betrayal, grief, and resilience, set against Iran’s dramatic landscapes and historic sites, interwoven with real events. The coup that toppled Iran’s democratically elected prime minister—after he nationalized the country’s oil industry, long controlled by Britain—restored the Shah’s authoritarian rule and set the stage for the Islamic Revolution, an upheaval whose consequences lie at the root of today’s conflicts. The novel cuts through smokescreens to reveal that the Islamic Revolution was not only the unintended consequence of the American-backed 1953 coup, code-named AJAX, but also came to be tacitly approved as a viable alternative. The Shah’s fall was quietly facilitated as he came to be seen as arrogant and increasingly problematic. By contrast, Khomeini was viewed as a Gandhi-like figure who, through secret contacts, promised to protect American oil interests.At its heart, The Iranian Woman is the story of a woman’s relentless pursuit of justice. But it is also a powerful metaphor for the injustice inflicted on the Iranian people after their country’s history was reshaped by American power and the lure of oil.The author, a former diplomat with a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, brings rare insight and authenticity to this gripping historical thriller. Read more