“It’s Iran. It’s always nuclear,” grumbles Rona-Lee Shimon — the Israeli model and actress from Fauda, now inhabiting the role of a clandestine Mossad agent — in The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, David DiGilio’s latest Amazon Prime spy thriller. Set against the fraught backdrop of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal in 2015, the series wastes no time establishing its grim worldview.

The prologue features a reckless exchange: an ISIS commander swapped for hostages on a truss bridge. American operatives stand alongside their Iraqi Security Force trainees, staring down their Islamic terrorist adversaries. It speaks to DiGilio’s directing dexterity that he can make you feel the atmospheric tension and portent as if you were there: from hostages suddenly hesitating to the militants shouting in Arabic and firing warning shots — it all makes the ambush feel inevitable, but no less gripping.