Iran after 1979 anointed itself advocate and agent for the rescue and revival of the oppressed of the world, including, above all, the community of believers or ummat al-Islamiyah. As such, the boundaries of Iran’s imagined community extended in the post-1979 era beyond the borders of the traditional “Guarded Domains” to include its Arab and Muslim neighbors, now conceived as both participants and beneficiaries of the Islamic Revolution. This essay argues that this new internationalist aspiration was in fact the latest expression of an old nationalist project, fostered by the Pahlavi and late-Qajar states and rooted in the traumas of the 19th century. In the new reverie on what it means to be “truly Iranian,” the plight of the “forlorn Arab” served as symbols and reminders of the indispensability of preserving Iran’s sovereignty against foreign encroachment, the dismemberment of Lebanon and Palestine less an inspiration for global struggle than they were contemporary reminders of the catastrophes of Turkmenchai and Golestan. Drawing upon 30 years of post-revolutionary textbook materials this essay traces the development of the Muslim Arab in the early elementary curriculum. Whereas the Pahlavi state portrayed the Arab Muslim as an abject figure incapable of redemption other than by the grace and intervention of Iranian civilization and culture, he was rendered merely pitiful by an Islamic educational system committed to instilling Iranian exceptionalism in its students.