 Hiro also said that the deliberate closure of the cinema doors and the local fire station's efforts, which he described as "tepid", strengthened the public belief that the Shah had the cinema burned.According to Roy Mottahedeh, author of "The Mantle of the Prophet", "thousands of Iranians who had felt neutral and had until now thought that the struggle was only between the shah and supporters of religiously conservative mullahs felt that the government might put their own lives on the block to save itself.Suddenly, for hundreds of thousands, the movement was their own business."