For Iranians in exile -- and the Americans who become embroiled in their intrigues -- Paris has long been the city of shadows. This is where the Ayatollah Khomenei awaited the ominous victory of his Islamic revolution; and where the deposed ministers and brutal spies from the late shah's government washed up in the 1979 revolution's bloody aftermath.

For well over two decades now, dreamers and schemers who hope to overthrow the mullahs have been lurking along the banks of the Seine, passing secrets and lies through proxies, back channels, and middlemen. Among the Persian plotters marooned in the French capital is a former minister of commerce in the shah's government, who has recently acquired the code name of “Ali.”

If one had asked the leaders of the United Nations to choose a test case through which they could demonstrate the organization's efficacy before the world, they would hardly have chosen Iraq. With a volatile security situation, too few peacekeeping troops, and a recent political history that has bitterly divided the members of the UN Security Council, Iraq is just the kind of politically charged, high-risk intervention that has recently overwhelmed the UN in places like Bosnia.