Middle East and North Africa

The United States and Israel’s strikes on Iran over the past weekend left many people searching for answers about the origins of the countries’ conflict. Some of the deepest insight may come from books—specifically, works of history, political science, and reportage.

Below, Foreign Policy staff and contributors share their top recommendations for understanding Iran today.

The United States and Israel’s strikes on Iran over the past weekend left many people searching for answers about the origins of the countries’ conflict. Some of the deepest insight may come from books—specifically, works of history, political science, and reportage.

Below, Foreign Policy staff and contributors share their top recommendations for understanding Iran today.

The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran Roy P. Mottahedeh (Oneworld Publications, 432 pp., $30, December 2008, paperback)

It might seem strange to reach for a book first published in 1985 to understand political developments in Iran today. But it’s not an accident that Roy P. Mottahedeh’s study on Iranian religion and culture, The Mantle of the Prophet, is considered a classic. First, there are its aesthetic virtues: The book follows the education and spiritual development of a semi-fictional cleric, Ali Hashemi, thus tracing a thread through some otherwise knotty intellectual and theological movements that are central to Iran’s recent political history.

It also offers a human lens for looking past the simplistic descriptions of the Islamic Republic as a religious regime imposed on the public. Mottahedeh shows that the Islamic Revolution succeeded because its religious currents were fused with distinct aspects of Iranian culture: Shiite piety has never been wholly separable from deep traditions of philosophy, poetry, art, jurisprudence, and language. That........

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