IRDT Tehran, Iran Looking out the window, Ayatollah Allameh Beheshti could see the embassies of the Vatican, Italy, and France. Just beyond his sight line, he knew, were the delegations of the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, Armenia, Germany, and—way off in the distance—the United States of America. So much of the world, so close! What will be happening in those buildings in the days to come? What panic will take place? What threats will be made? Will those complexes even be standing at the end of the year? Who will be ruling Iran . . . Islam . . . the world? Which reminds me . . . “Close your books,” Beheshti said to the teens sitting at two long tables. Immediately, all thirty-two books snapped shut. He examined his students—all male, all aged thirteen to eighteen, and all wearing long white kurta shirts with white kufis on their heads. These young men represented some of the cream of Iran’s future. They all came from extremely wealthy and influential families; while there was a lot of oil money represented, there were also two brothers whose father owned a chain of electronics stores throughout Tehran and the surrounding provinces, four students whose fathers were either governmental ministers or deputy ministers, and one boy, the youngest of the class, whose father was the owner of the third-largest television network in Iran.
