Operation Delilah (ePub)

General Hashemi, head of Iranian Intelligence Service, expects to destroy an oil dependent U.S, economy by denying it oil from Saudi Arabia, a major supplier. He names his plan Operation Delilah. However, he needs permission from President Ahmadi to carry it out. Ahmadi suspects Hashemi will use its success to lay claim the presidency.

Ahmadi has designs on another term for himself and needs Hashemi's plan to fail. Utilizing an ex-IIS officer, Major-General Bustani, as a conduit, Hashemi's plan is leaked to Israel's Mossad. Ben Zev, Mossad chief in Washington, calls his CIA contact Bill Barone to confirm that a CIA hit squad is headed to the Middle East. Barone discovers that rogue CIA hit squad, headed by John Zephyr, one of the CIA's top assassins, has been recruited and they are now in Egypt. Ben Zev and Bill Barone join forces along with General El Sayed, head of Egyptian Internal Security, to stop the rogue assassins. They don't who is to be killed or where.

To protect itself from a stoppage of oil imports, the U.S. maintains a strategic oil reserve. For Hashem's plan to be successful those reserves must be destroyed. Iranian agents in the U.S. recruit a group of American Jihadists and send them to Texas to attack those reserves.

In the main Bazaar in Cairo, Barone spots Zephyr in a crowd and he is captured. Zephyr's team is now useless and Hashemi has them killed. A backup team assassinates brothers of the Saudi king and plants evidence to show that the CIA killed them. That evidence is enough to convince the Saudis to stop oil shipments to the U.S.

Unfortunately, Operation Delilah is only partially successful. The destruction of the U.S. oil is successful, as is the assassination of relatives of the Saudi king and the stoppage of oil imports to the U.S. However, his plan to also overthrow of the Saudi king and replace him with Ibn Kamall, an anti-American cleric, comes up short. General Hakim, a corrupt Saudi, had agreed to sell to Hashemi the security details Kamall needs to seize the Saudi King. Hakim demands more money and furious Hashemi pays him in counterfeit currency. Hakim takes his revenge on Kamall.

The Saudi oil embargo continues. The Egyptians have an Iranian officer in jail and Ben fabricates a confession for him naming Hashemi as the man behind the killing of the Saudis. The Saudis don't believe the confession is genuine and the embargo remains.

The Saudi demand for lifting the embargo is a purge of those CIA officials who should have prevented the killings. The U.S. president wanting a second term complies.

The president of Iran sees in Ben's fabricated confession an opportunity to destroy Hashemi. He demotes him and appoints General Bustani head of IIS. Hashemi is forced to work for a man whose career he had previously destroyed.

Having failed to stop the assassinations, the CIA offers Barone two options, neither of which he wants.

General Bustani must now face the consequences of having sold the details of Operation Delilah to the Mossad.