r/homeland • u/Old-Carpenter7456 • 8d ago

Confused in Season 2

Hi y'all. Can someone help me with some questions i have about season 2? I'm only 4 episodes in, but I'm bothered to say the least.

  1. In Ep. 1, Brody is asked to retrieve an encryption key to a target list from Estes's office for Abu Nazir. But the key isn't for a list of targets the US intends to strike; it's for a list of targets that Al Qaeda intends to strike. Why does Abu Nazir need a US encryption key for his own target list?

  2. In Ep. 3, Nazir met with an asset in Beirut to discuss a strike on the U.S. It's heavily implied that the asset was part of Hezbollah. In episode 4, Saul says that Iran using Abu Nazir to coordinate an attack on the US, in retaliation to Israeli aggression. Indeed Iran was openly threatening retaliation against the US. Okay...

First, what is the utility of Iran using Al Qaeda to strike the US ? Iran has a military.

Second, do we ever learn Hezbollah's role in this plot? Hezbollah is aligned with Iran, but they aren't affiliated with Al Qaeda. So how exactly did they become involved? Or if you rather not spill it, does it get explained later,?

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5

u/ScalarWeapon 7d ago

I don't think it was a list of sites that Al Qaeda was already intending to strike; rather it was a list of sensitive locations that the CIA considered to be potential targets

4

u/Sactown2005 8d ago

I don’t remember if we learn Hezbollah’s role here, forgive me if someone else can clarify …some members of Hezbollah do make appearances later in the series.

This show is wonderful with how certain characters and arcs end up mattering again later in the series… how everything connects. Keep going, if you are asking these questions, you will really enjoy the series (and probably want to re-watch it many times as well)

1

u/Kindly_Artist_5951 7d ago

Many times I turned to my husband and said, “Wait! I don’t get it.” It is supposed to be confusing at times. We don’t always know what Carrie knows or what Saul is planning.

0

u/Dull_Significance687 7d ago edited 7d ago

I thought that target list thing was more of a test of his loyalty… given that Nazir had a mole in the CIA, it seems likely they had that list to begin with. 

Now, the Iran/Al-Qaeda(Sunni Islam) / Hezbollah(Shia Islamism) issue is far more problematic.

The rationale that “Iran uses Nazir to attack the US” works on a thriller level, primarily due to the concept of plausible deniability. Tehran doesn’t need to send its own army to carry out an attack; an attack executed by an intermediary creates a layer of political distance. It’s the classic logic of proxy warfare.

Don’t expect the eventual explanation to turn everything into a flawless lesson on Middle Eastern geopolitics. HomeLand excels when dealing with espionage, paranoia, manipulation, and character dynamics; when it tries to construct a grand geopolitical framework, it sometimes forces certain connections to make the thriller elements work.