598 • ZAEHNER, ROBERT
that Ralph Izzard and Cox may have been serving more than one
master when they undertook a hazardous journey to the Dutch fron-
tier with Germany in November 1939.ZAEHNER, ROBERT.A brilliant linguist with a talent for picking up
obscure Middle Eastern dialects, Zaehner was initially recruited by
Special Operations Executiveout of Oxford in 1940, but he trans-
ferred to theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) and in 1943 was
posted to Tehran under press attache ́cover. In reality, he was to spend
two years living among the tribes of northern Persia, crossing over
the frontier into Soviet territory and developing networks of sabo-
teurs in a harsh, mountainous territory filled with hostile enemy
agents.
After the war, Zaehner remained in SIS and was posted to Malta
to assist in the training ofAlbaniane ́migre ́s destined to return to
their country in a fruitless attempt, codenamedvaluable, to topple
the Communist regime. Although Zaehner knew no Albanian, he
soon learned the language and later, in 1950, transferred to Greece
to supervise the teams of guerrillas infiltrated over the border from
Macedonia.
Once it became clear that the Albanian operation had failed,
Zaehner was moved back to Tehran to help run a brilliant scheme
designed to replace the anti-Western prime minister, Dr. Mohammed
Mussadeq. Zaehner boasted many useful contacts in Iran, dating back
to the networks he had recruited during the war, and they were to be
of critical importance when the coup was eventually mounted, by
which time Zaehner and the rest ofMonty Woodhouse’s SIS station
had been evacuated.
When Zaehner retired from SIS, he returned to academic life at
Oxford, where he taught Persian. He also lectured at Columbia Uni-
versity and the University of London and was a prolific author on the
subject of comparative religions. He converted to Catholicism in
1946, and among his many publications areDialectical Christianity
and Christian Materialism,Evolution in Religion, andThe Catholic
Church and World Religions.
Shortly before his death in November 1974, at the age of 61,
Zaehner was interviewed byPeter Wright, themolehunter atMI5
who was on the trail of a Soviet spy that had been partially identified