Natan and the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil are thrilled to announce the Fall 2023 Natan Notable Book: Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination—and Secret Diplomacy—to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East by Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar (Simon & Schuster, September 2023).

With the sit­u­a­tion in the Mid­dle East tenser than it has been in many years, hard­ly a day goes by when Iran or Iran­ian-backed groups are not in our news cycles. The con­cern about a nuclear Iran has trou­bled coun­tries across the globe, prompt­ed sum­mits and treaties, and all man­ner of diplo­ma­cy. For Israel, a nuclear Iran is a threat that they are, under­stand­ably, unwill­ing to allow. In Tar­get Tehran, Yon­ah Jere­my Bob and Ilan Evy­atar, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and con­trib­u­tors to The Jerusalem Post, tell the sto­ry of Israel’s ​“secret war” on Iran, the cam­paigns by the Mossad to expose, sab­o­tage, and pre­vent Iran’s nuclear plans. Through inter­views with many very high­ly ranked offi­cials, Evy­atar and Bob weave a thrilling nar­ra­tive – one that reads like a spy nov­el – which out­lines and fore­shad­ows the com­pli­cat­ed machi­na­tions of one of the most com­plex regions in the world.

Reflect­ing on the choice, Matt Hiltzik, long­time mem­ber of the Natan Notable Books com­mit­tee, shared, ​“As we are all start­ing to bet­ter under­stand the real­i­ties and dan­gers of our post 10/7/23 world, Yonah’s and Ilan’s Tar­get Tehran pro­vides read­ers with unique insights into the Mossad’s chal­lenges and suc­cess­es in lim­it­ing Iran’s capa­bil­i­ties to inflict fur­ther harm on Israel, both direct­ly and through its prox­ies. This is exact­ly the type of con­tent that Natan’s Notable Book series hopes to high­light because under­stand­ing these his­tor­i­cal dynam­ics is cru­cial to under­stand­ing the com­plex­i­ties of Iran’s goals and its impact else­where in the Mid­dle East.”