What the Peace Corps volunteer found rather comical was bearing witness to the element of farce that police states often engender, of how easily the arrogance of officialdom can tilt into stupidity. As in all Iranian towns and cities, a favorite guessing game of Sonqorians was speculating on the identity of the SAVAK agents in their midst, a parlor game Metrinko was increasingly brought into as he gained residents’ trust. In the late summer of 1971, such speculations were abruptly resolved when the regime announced that travel to the city of Shiraz was temporarily off-limits to all private Iranian citizens, a security precaution for the upcoming international gala being held in nearby Persepolis. Except that soon after that announcement, many of those Sonqorians suspected of being secret police climbed aboard buses and left town, bound for Shiraz. “So that proved to everyone they were SAVAK.” Metrinko laughed. “They were all going down to stand guard over the shah’s party.”

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Scott Anderson