About Peyman Pejman
Peyman Pejman is an award-winning journalist with over 20 years of experience. He has worked with respected newspapers, news agencies and radio stations such as The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cox Newspapers, The Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Pejman has extensive experience in the Middle East and the Arab world. His tenure in the Middle East has corresponded with important timelines in the region: the Iranian revolution, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Gulf Wars and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In addition to his journalistic career, he has been a media and communications professor and a media consultant/advisor/trainer.
The Review
The Age of Intolerance is a work of fiction, set in 2025, dealing with an acute problem in 2010: how to deal with overt and covert forces of religious fundamentalism and suicidal political ambitions of a handful of states. Sitting on top of snow-capped mountains of the independent Republic of Kurdistan, once a part of Iraq, Charles Shahin wondered how the Middle East had changed in the past few decades, and how much he had to do with it. Once a journalist, Shahin agrees to become an undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. Soon after being deployed in Cyprus, Shahin becomes aware of a two-pronged covert Iranian plan: destabilize the Persian Gulf, and purchase Chinese technology to build submarine-based MIRV missile systems, capable of carrying nuclear warheads to attack the eastern coast of the United States. Shahin also learns that Iran plans to attack Israel. Shahin tries to warn his CIA bosses in Langley and the White House but his warnings fall on deaf ears. He and his wife, daughter of a ranking member of the Saudi royal family, decide that the US government bureaucracy and inter-agency rivalry make it impossible to stop an impending attack on the US and Israel. With the help of a friend from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Shahin and his wife stop the attacks, but the United States attacks the submarine from which the Iranian leaders attempted to rain missiles on America. Shahin and his wife flee the United States and take refuge in their villa in southern France.
3.5 Stars
About Age of Intolerance
Age of Intolerance is both an espionage thriller tackling a serious and newsworthy current affairs topic and heart-warming saga of a relationship between estranged brother and sister, each having pledged allegiance to a political master bent on defeating the other.
Charles Shahin is a American journalist of Iranian descent whom the Central Intelligence Agency convinces to become a spy, skirting a long-held tradition that spy agencies not recruit reporters. Pretending to be a reporter for a US-based Internet newsgathering site, Shahin settles in sleepy Cyprus, long the center of spies and money launderers dealing with or keeping an eye on the Middle East.
While in Cyprus, Shahin gets wind of an Iranian plan to destabilize the Persian Gulf and purchase Chinese military secrets to build nuclear technology capable of hitting the United States and Israel. The plot was hatched by none other than his long-lost sister, now a ranking official in Iran.
Despite repeated warning, CIA bosses fail to mount a coherent strategy. What occupies Washington’s mind more is a spate of domestic acts of terrorism. Careful examination reveals the existence of a fanatic religious group inside the United States, bred and funded by none other than Washington’s best ally in the Arab world: Saudi Arabia. The Saudi goal: to “export” its internal “troubles” and force America to pick a fight with a common enemy: Iran.
Convinced an Iranian attack is imminent, Shahin and his wife — a Saudi princess — try to stop it, knowing US government bureaucracy is fractured and reaching a consensus might take too long.
Help comes from an unlikely ally, which, no doubt, has its own political ambitions, and its card to play.
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