A story takes on different aspects depending on where you begin to tell it, and we tend to forget what happened a long time ago. One can understand Iran’s relationship to the West only if the story contains the 1953 coup organized by the CIA and MI6 that ousted Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister. And it is impossible to grasp the present success of ISIS or the “Islamic State” if the narrative leaves out the Iraq War of 2003 and Western policy toward Bashir al-Assad in Syria. Readers who want a better understanding of the historical context in the region should turn to this work, a kind of “black book” of Western policy in the Middle East.