Apple’s show “Tehran” is not meant to be totally realistic but from both a Krav Maga perspective and an overall realism perspective, it is starting to fail the viewer.
Without spoiling too much, in one episode, super Mossad agent Tamar is in on Iran on a mission. She goes rogue and is put under house arrest by her agency, under the supervision of another Mossad operative. The other operative completely bungles the mission by allowing Tamar to be alone and by not maintaining proper security procedure, and then Tamar takes out the agent so easily, it borders on science fiction. She sneaks up behind the agent, push kicks him so hard he goes flying into the wall and then proceeds to stomp him into unconsciousness.
First, let’s focus on the feasibility. Tamar may be written to be the greatest fictional operative that the state of Israel has ever produced but unless we’ve changed genres and made her a cyborg, she is subject to the laws of physics and biology, just as all of us are. (By the way? Cyborg Mossad agents is a great idea for a television show. If anyone wants to write it, I will be happy to also choreograph the best fight scenes for you)
A Deadly Opponent
On the show, Tamar is facing a well-seasoned elite operator. He has been selected from the top .01% of recruits and was deemed capable of working in one of the most dangerous missions possible. He has been extensively schooled in surveillance and in hand-to-hand combat. Without leaking anything confidential, I can tell you special forces train Krav Maga multiple hours a day whenever they are not in the field.
Such an opponent would not be taken down so easily in a single poorly placed blow. As capture means torture and death, these agents are trained to relentlessly fight for their lives.
Of course, the show would argue Tamar is equally trained. The problem is, even if they are both well-trained, her opponent is a well-built man who is eighteen centimeters and around twenty-seven kilograms of muscle heavier than her.
Here is a hard truth I learned early on. Size matters. Training can allow smaller people to overcome a great deal, but there is no way to deny the laws of physics give a tremendous advantage to height and weight. Give the larger opponent the same training and they become a very formidable opponent.
I’m around Tamar’s height and weight. While I’m not a Kidon-trained agent, I’m a former IDF Krav Maga champion and by necessity, I have had to specialize in fighting people bigger and taller than me. I have seventeen years of training with the top names of Krav Maga, and I’ve served in the infantry. I’m quite capable in combat.
Even with all that, it would be a brutal battle to take on a currently serving elite Mossad officer in a street fight. I trained the special forces to be absolutely lethal and furiously well-skilled in hand-to-hand combat. To take on one who also had that height and weight advantage over me would be the toughest fight of my life. While I have confidence in my abilities, this isn’t a friendly tournament match where we shake hands afterward. In this match-up, the stakes are life and death, there are no rules, taps, or referees. One mistake is game over.
Suffice it to say, I’m grateful these operators are my comrades in arms, not my enemies.
So now we’ve established who Tamar is fighting. With that, I rewatched the scene and laughed.
No Chance That Will Happen
There’s no way Tamar would have ever gotten the chance to attack. It is a foundational principle of Krav Maga that one cannot defend against an attack without being able to also perform the attack. For example, you can’t understand how to stop a rear-naked choke unless you know how to properly apply it. If you can’t understand how the attacker will behave, how do you counter it? Therefore, the agent would have been trained on how to keep a prisoner under complete control by having to take on the role of a prisoner trying to escape, during kidnapping drills and arrest drills.
I taught these lessons myself. In order to master the skill set, half the soldiers would capture and restrain their fellow soldiers, making sure that they didn’t escape. Then they would switch and would become the bound soldier trying to figure out how to escape. While no brutality was allowed, we made sure to keep it very realistic. Even though your “guards” were actually some of your best friends, you still were zip-tied with a bag over your head, locked in a room and your friends were thwarting your escape every step of the way. Going “soft” on an opponent would be an act of insubordination against the training so everyone was playing their roles to win.
Having practiced both roles extensively, operators would have personal experience in how prisoners would think when trying to escape and how to maintain control over a prisoner of their own.
Also, those in the program were the most elite and therefore, had something we dub “common sense.” Therefore, they would have known to never turn their back on a prisoner and to remain in the corner opposite the door, where they could monitor all exits. They would know that when guarding a prisoner without backup, you need to have them in your sight at all times. While at minimum, hands need to be visible, it’s highly advised to use handcuffs. Better safe than sorry.
Therefore, Tamar being allowed to be alone and allowed to wander freely would be unacceptable. Her guard would know she would likely try to climb out a window or grab an improvised weapon, as he had seen in those training drills. He wouldn’t even permit her the chance to try.
No Training Shown
Tamar never engaged in any techniques taught to evade capture like the ones listed above. I can’t advise how to take out a top agent, but I can say a front push kick to the leg would definitely not send a kidon agent into the wall and down to the floor unless we are back on the cyborg idea. A front push kick can’t generate that level of force. He’s too heavy, she’d go flying backward just from the force alone.
It’s also very inefficient. At best, if you push kick a bigger and taller operator hard, you cause them to bend forward and fall on top of you. That puts them in a perfect position to get on top in full mount, crushing all their weight down while you are fighting from the bottom. From there, the operator would administer a submission choke of their choice, flip you over to your belly and get the handcuffs out. Based on training drills, this would take less than thirty seconds.
At worst, you just annoyed them. In order to disable an agent, you must hit a weak point. The knee is an excellent and devastating knee weak point that would be one of the primary areas I suggest targeting to escape, but in order for it to be effective, you need to damage the joint badly. That would require a stomp kick like a sidekick or a very hard strike like a roundhouse, which means a large amount of force concentrated into a small area.
A push kick spreads the force over a larger area which pushes the target back but does less overall damage. Therefore, it wouldn’t even do much more than bruise an operator, which would not be painful due to the fight adrenaline and training.
The operator would simply use a hammer punch to the temple, get her into a submission choke, and easily subdue her before she could blink. Of course, had the operator followed protocol in the first place, the attack wouldn’t have happened because Tamar would have been handcuffed as soon as she was in custody.
I know, it’s just a show. But seriously, this is Israel. Land of Krav Maga. Please, do better. There are so many amazing teachers who can make these fight scenes amazing. Please, find one.
If you can’t, I have a list.
Note: I’m so excited to be covering the Combatives Conference in Florida this year. I look forward to learning from experts in the field and can’t wait to return, with even more knowledge.
- Tehran fails to impress on Krav Maga - September 18, 2023
- The Pursuit of Perfection - August 7, 2023
- Grace Under Pressure - March 17, 2023
Have you seen any TV shows or movies showing Krav Maga properly? I’m pretty sure”Operation Finale” does it well.