I recently re-read the excellent On Wings of Eagles, by Ken Follett — the story of Ross Perot’s assembling of a team of his own corporate executives — plus Bull Simons, of course — on a life-and-death mission to rescue two of his employees from the chaos of the 1979 Iranian revolution, and from the clutches of one Iranian government official in particular.
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At first blush, it seems astonishing that Perot’s attorneys allowed him to give so much detail to Follett, because the book seems to show Perot conspiring to break U.S., foreign, and international laws left and right (although it is very cleverly written from a legal perspective, and the details left out are intriguing — for example, one can infer that Perot and Simons funded and organized the revolutionary mob that stormed Gazre prison, although Follett is careful to never directly say so).
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The actual exfiltration occurred at the Turkish-Iranian border, and Follett recounts members of Perot’s team noticing the incredible beauty of the place — “better than Switzerland,” one of them thinks at one point.
Well, yes. Here’s lake Van, a bit north of the Iranian border.
