In the horror that has recently descended upon Iraq and in the face of the ongoing horrors in Israel and Palestine, it is too easy to forget about Iran. But it was Iran that in many ways forced the West to begin to come to an understanding of the way in which conflicts between Islam and Judaism and Islam and Christianity would be instrumental in shaping much of the course of foreign relations at the end of the 20th century and now in the beginning of the 21st century. Roy MottahedehÂ’s book, The Mantle of the Prophet, reminds us of the importance of Iran in setting the stage in many ways for the ways in which non-Muslims and Muslims would perceive each other in the years that followed the Islamic Revolution that established Iraq as a theocracy in 1979.