The secure comms room resembled a spaceship built from Soviet tank parts. The walls were padded with soundproofing panels the color of “bureaucratic depression,” and the air conditioner hummed with the strain of a dying elephant. On the desk sat a glass of tea with a lonely lemon floating in it like a sunken island. Amirkhan Mousavi was screaming into the receiver of a red phone so loudly that the bulletproof glass separating him from the operators fogged up
