Empire

Guests: Iran and US: Diplomatic enrichment

Read more about the guests featured in this month’s episode on the Iran nuclear deal and its global implications.

In New York

Peter Beinart teaches journalism and political science at the City University of New York. He is a senior political writer at The Daily Beast and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His third book, The Crisis of Zionism, was published in 2012.

Dov Waxman is an associate professor of political science at Baruch College. He also teaches at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. His research interests include Middle East politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and US foreign policy towards the Middle East. In 2006, he wrote The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/ Defining the Nation.

In Washington DC

Barbara Slavin is a Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. She has written Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (2007). Previously, she was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace.

Chas Freeman served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94. He was the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time of operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. And he is the president emeritus of the Middle East Policy Council.

Reza Marashi is director of research at the National Iranian American Council. Previously, he worked at the Office of Iranian Affairs at the US Department of State, and as an analyst at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS).

Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Previously, she has taught Persian at Oxford University, and Persian, contemporary Persian literature and the women’s movement in Iran at Princeton University. Esfandiari has written several books on Iran, including Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and has edited Iranian Women: Past, Present and Future. She wrote about her arrest and solitary confinement for 105 days in Tehran in her memoir, My Prison, My Home (2009).

In Doha, Qatar

Mahjoob Zweiri heads the department of Humanities at the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Qatar. He is also an associate professor in Contemporary History of the Middle East and a Graduate Faculty member in the Gulf Studies Programme. Zweiri’s research interests include contemporary history of the Middle East, Iran’s foreign policy and domestic politics, Shia Islam and political Islam, and Middle East Politics and Security. 

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
He is a founding member of Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, a leading cultural critic, an award-winning author, and a public speaker. Dabashi is the author and editor of more than 25 books and writes on topics ranging from Iranian studies and comparative literature to medieval Islam and world cinema. His most recent books include The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012), The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012), and Being a Muslim in the World (2013).

Marwan J. Kabalan is an analyst with the Doha Institute and a Research Fellow at the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, DC. Until November 2012, he served as the dean of the Faculty of International Relations and Diplomacy at the Kalamoon University in Damascus. He was also the member of the board of directors at the Damascus University Center for Strategic Studies and Research.

At Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. He has served as the head of the foreign relations committee of Iran’s National Security Council from 1997-2005. He has also been a spokesman for Iran during its nuclear programme negotiations between 2003-2005 with the European Union. He has authored The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir (2012).

Payam Fazlinejadm is a writer for Kayhan newspaper, known as Iran’s most conservative newspaper.

Emad Abshenas is a political analyst and the former managing director of the Iran Daily .

Empire can be seen from the last Sunday of every month at 2000GMT, and is re-aired during the following week at these times GMT: Monday: 1200GMT; Tuesday: 0100GMT; Wednesday: 0600GMT.

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