In this Crown Seminar, Malika Zeghal challenges claims that Middle Eastern states turned secular in modern times and shows instead the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion.
In this Middle East Brief, Maryam Alemzadeh examines the IRGC’s evolving role in Iran, highlighting how the IRGC’s flexibility and informality allow its extraterritorial activities to largely evade sanctions.
In this Crown Conversation, we spoke to Dina Esfandiary and Hadi Kahalzadeh about Iranian President Pezeshkian’s first fifty days in office, potential shifts in Iran's domestic and foreign policies, and the challenges that lie ahead.
The Crown Center for Middle East Studies is committed to conducting balanced and dispassionate research of the modern Middle East that meets the highest academic standards. The center seeks to help make decision- and opinion-makers better informed about the region. The scope of the center's research includes the 22 members of the Arab League as well as Turkey, Iran and Israel. The Crown Center's approach is multidisciplinary in its study of the politics, economics, history, security, sociology and anthropology of the region's states and societies.
In 2019, the U.S. designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. Yet, this action, along with prior sanctions on the IRGC and Iran, has done little to curb the IRGC’s extraterritorial behavior or its ability to inflict casualties on Western allied forces in the Middle East. What, then, have these sanctions achieved? In this Middle East Brief, Maryam Alemzadeh examines the IRGC’s evolving role in Iran, highlighting how the IRGC’s flexibility and informality allow its extraterritorial activities to largely evade sanctions. While terrorism-related sanctions have negatively impacted the IRGC’s domestic operations, Alemzadeh argues that they have not compelled the IRGC or Iran to change course domestically or regionally, calling into question the utility of a sanctions regime focused on the IRGC.
Image credit: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via AP
The Crown Center is dedicated to sharing balanced and dispassionate research on the Middle East. Please see the Crown Center analyses which delve into the roots and evolution of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.
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Counter/Argument: A Middle East Podcast is produced by the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Through conversations with scholars and practitioners encompassing a variety of disciplines and perspectives, each episode will debunk key misconceptions about the contemporary Middle East. "Counter/Argument" is committed to a balanced and dispassionate approach to the region and to making scholarship more widely accessible. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
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Image credit: Chae Lee