45: So what if Chapter 42 is brought forward?

June 9, 1978, on the road back to Ahvaz.

After Karimi threw that question out, the car interior was silent for nearly a minute.

On both sides of the road were the iconic low shrubs and cracked red soil of Khuzestan, with an occasional date palm poking into the horizon, like a lonely flag casually stuck into this land.

The Fiat's engine was noisy, but it was a uniform noise, which instead created a strange sense of quiet.

"What if Saddam Hussein acts early?" Reza did not open his eyes, leaning against the back of the seat, his voice flat.

"Right," Karimi said. "Our preparations were based on that 1980 time window. If he moves it up to 1979, or even the end of 1978... our arsenal isn't ready, and the militia training is only one-third complete."

"Then we fight."

Karimi was silent for a moment.

"Your Highness, you say that lightly."

"I say it with great weight." Reza finally opened his eyes and looked out the car window. "Karimi, do you know why Saddam Hussein would only act after 1980? It's not because he didn't want to fight earlier; it's because he still had concerns in 1978 and 1979. He was waiting for two things: first, for Pahlavi to completely collapse and Iran to fall into a power vacuum; second, for the United States to nod, or at least tacitly approve. Neither of these had happened in 1978."

"But our bait..."

"The bait is to show him the direction, not to urge him to launch an attack." Reza said. "If he sees a gap in the northern defenses of Khuzestan, at most, he will accelerate the frequency of intelligence gathering and send more reconnaissance teams to test the reality. What really makes him decide to move troops is never a financial document, but his judgment of the whole game in his mind: Iran is in chaos, the United States has permitted it, and the opportunity has arrived. Before these three conditions are met simultaneously, Saddam Hussein will not launch a full-scale war; he doesn't have the guts."

Karimi gripped the steering wheel and thought for a moment: "Then what if it's just a small-scale border conflict? He uses one or two brigades to test us?"

"Then I will fight back with one battalion and let him know the price of testing us." Reza said, his tone without any hesitation, as if he were talking about something that had already happened. "War is something that sometimes requires prior drills. If Saddam Hussein initiates a small friction before the official war begins, that is actually a good thing. I can take the opportunity to test the actual combat effectiveness of the border positions, and at the same time give the people of the country a ready-made target of 'foreign invasion.' This is much more effective than me standing up and shouting slogans myself."

Karimi didn't speak again, but his hand relaxed a little, no longer gripping so tightly.

Reza leaned back against the seat again and ran through the timeline of the next few months in his mind.

The second half of 1978 was the most dangerous window, and also the window with the most dense opportunities. The situation in Tehran would be like a pot of water with a lid on it, getting hotter and hotter until one day the lid was blown off completely. Pahlavi's pillars were breaking one by one; the loyalty of the army was maintained by money, the intellectuals had long since become alienated, religious forces were organizing the anger of the people in the name of Ayatollah Khomeini, and on the American side, the Carter administration's "human rights diplomacy" was making the White House increasingly uncomfortable with the crackdown in Iran, and aid was beginning to waver.

All of this had already happened in his previous life, and the result was that Ayatollah Khomeini took all the fruits.

In this life, Reza wanted to replace the root system of the tree before the fruit was ripe.

June 14, Ahvaz.

In the conference room on the second basement level of the Cyrus Workshop, there were only three people: Reza, Fatima, and a man Reza was meeting for the first time today.

This man was named Mohammad Iskandari, 53 years old, formerly the chief metallurgical engineer of the Iran National Steel Company. Three years ago, he was fired for publicly criticizing the import of American steel for "damaging the interests of the domestic industry," and now he made a living as a technical consultant for private builders. He was brought by Fatima.

He sat across the table, his expression complex, like someone who had just been dragged out of a dream, not yet fully confirming that everything in front of him was real.

On the table lay a blueprint, drawn by Reza himself, which had been revised seven times.

"Persian Tiger Type 1 Main Battle Tank chassis plan." Reza spoke directly, without nonsense. "I need you to tell me, with Iran's current steel smelting level, whether the rolling of this armor plate can be implemented within three years."

Iskandari lowered his head, traced the lines of the blueprint with his finger, looked at it for about four or five minutes, and didn't speak.

Fatima tapped the table with a pencil beside him; she had this habit, tapping when thinking, a rhythmic kind of tapping.

"Rolling is no problem." Iskandari finally raised his head. "Homogeneous steel armor, this thickness, our Isfahan steel plant has the ability to make it. The equipment was introduced from West Germany in the 1960s; it's a bit old, but the precision is sufficient. The problem is not the steel, but the heat treatment."

"Which heat treatment?" Fatima stopped tapping the table.

"After the armor plate is rolled and formed, it needs quenching treatment to increase the hardness," Iskandari said. "The quenching process we are currently using is oil quenching, and the hardness can reach about 280 Brinell, but the bulletproof performance required by this design drawing needs at least 320 or more. It must be water quenched or graded quenched, which requires modifying the equipment and also requires a supporting cooling system."

"How long will the modification take?" Reza asked.

"Counting from the moment I sit here, if the funds and equipment are all in place, eighteen months."

"Funds are no problem," Reza said. "For equipment, I need you to make a list: what can be found in domestic scrap factories, and what must be purchased from abroad. For what can be found domestically, give me an answer within a month; for what must be imported, I will find a way, but I need you to tell me an alternative plan. Assuming the import channels are blocked, what can you use to make do?"

Iskandari was stunned for a moment; this question was clearly beyond his expectations.

"Make do..." He rubbed his chin with his hand. "If we really can't buy imported equipment, we can consider using stepped salt bath quenching as a substitute. The principle is different, but the final hardness can reach between 300 and 310. It's a bit worse, but it's not unusable. We can build the salt bath tank ourselves; the materials are available domestically."

"Good," Reza nodded. "Then we'll walk on two legs. I'll negotiate the channels for imported equipment, and at the same time, you start the salt bath quenching plan as a backup."

Fatima interjected: "What about the engine? The chassis plan is solved, what about the power pack?"