Nick Berg's Blog: Shadows of Tehran Blog

The Islamic Republic uses human beings—schoolgirls, political prisoners, protesters, and dual nationals—as leverage to control its own population and to gain bargaining power in Iran-US relations.

Several patterns are well-documented:

Disappeared activists

Disappeared activists like Bita Shafiei and detained family members, such as her mother, are used to intim...

[image error] [image error] Why ask who owns the algorithms in 2025?

In 2025, the front line of the Middle East isn’t only outside Gaza or around Natanz. It is also inside your phone.

Your feed fills with Gaza footage, anti-Israel protests, “free Palestine” slogans, angry threads about Iran’s regime, and rumours about the next strike between Israel and Iran. You can feel that something – or someone – is pushing these emot...

What just happened—and why does it matter for the IRGC?

In November 2025, Iranians watched two shocking clips circulate in the shadows of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)–dominated security state:

In Tehran’s metro, two men in air-defense–style uniforms unfurled the pre-1979 Lion-and-Sun flag. M...

All three can be true at once. Evacuation orders are signals, not shields: they intersect with logistics, international law, and information warfare (source NATO).

In Nick Berg’s world—framed in Shadows of Tehran—the discipline is to describe mechanisms (routes, timetables, risks) rather than assign moral labels.

That approach resists propaganda while centering people affected by the Israel–Iran conflict and other mode...

The story of Tehran’s 1979 isn’t confined to a single year.
Its aftershocks carried into the 1980s and beyond — shaping who could speak, who could stay, and who was forced to vanish.
By the time Ricardo, the protagonist of Shadows of Tehran, became known as the Shadow Rider, Iran’s revolution had hardened into repression. The streets once filled with chants now echoed with surveillance.
When his name appeared at the t...

The Israel-Iran war no longer behaves like a conventional war. It resembles a self-sustaining marketplace—one that trades in weapons, data, and influence.

What began as a regional rivalry has matured into an ecosystem of proxy networks and contractors whose profits rise when stability falls.

Nick Berg’s Shadows of Tehran anticipated this shift long before the headlines caught up. His protagonist Ricardo, a child of both...

Terror Finance: The Invisible War That Turns Families Into Frontlines

Terror finance is the silent engine of modern conflict—the money that builds weapons long before they’re fired.

In Shadows of Tehran, Nick Berg opens not on a battlefield but in a backyard, where a father and son crouch in the dirt, turning toy soldiers into casualties.

That quiet domestic scene captures the essence of every...

When formal banking channels close under sanctions, the economy doesn’t stop—it shifts into the shadows. The shadow economy includes informal networks of trade, credit, and logistics that move beyond regulatory sight.

In recent years, this system has become central to how sanctioned states—including Iran—maintain revenue and fund regional influence. What was once the grey zone of commerce is now a primary battlefield of...

Military thriller books often focus on the roar of combat, but the real battles sometimes unfold in silence—across ledgers, budgets, and hidden contracts.

When war budgets expand, transparency collapses. Numbers disappear behind “national security” labels, contracts vanish into private networks, and oversight bodies are told to wait until the conflict ends. Yet that fog of finance is precisely where the next wars are f...

The phrase “Iran money” means more than state budgets or oil exports. It describes a shadow economy that moves across front companies, shipping networks, and informal exchange systems — financing hybrid conflicts far beyond Iran’s borders. As author Nick Berg, writer of Shadows of Tehran, argues, following the money is often the only way to follow accountability.

Recent investigations by the U.S. Treasury (source) and...