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"Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East."
–Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

"Robert Baer [was] one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the past twenty years."
–Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Atlantic Monthly

Modern-day suicide bombers who strike fear into the heart of Western cities are a relatively recent phenomenon. The Cult of the Suicide Bomber reveals the secret history of the suicide bomber, from the child martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war, the truck bombers in southern Lebanon, to the young men and women who now strap explosives to their bodies and calmly blow up themselves and hundreds of others in the streets of the Middle East.

Former CIA spy, Robert Baer, the man George Clooney's character is based upon in the film Syriana, returns to his former center of operations, the Middle East, to trace the origins of the modern day bomber. There is no good news here for the fearful and uncertain in the West, but Baer does present a clear landscape of where and how the pathological virus has thrived and how the notions of honor and glory emerged.

In this groundbreaking documentary, Baer reveals the fascinating story of the world's first suicide bomber, 13-year-old Hossein Fahmideh who was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war and is now a hero in Iranand visits his highly decorated grave in the graveyard of martyrs just outside Tehran.