Crown Center for Middle East Studies

Crown Conversation 23 (Summary) — On July 28, 2024, Masoud Pezeshkian took office as the ninth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran after winning a special election to replace former President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May. Pezeshkian’s victory surprised many Iran observers, raising questions about the future of Iran after two decades of conservative rule. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke to Dina Esfandiary and Hadi Kahalzadeh about Pezeshkian’s first fifty days in office, potential shifts in Iran's domestic and foreign policies, and the challenges that lie ahead. They examine the forces shaping Pezeshkian’s new government and Iran's regional strategy, the prospects for a new nuclear deal with the U.S., and the impact of Iran’s economic crisis and ongoing political conflict over mandatory veiling and the succession of the Supreme Leader.

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Dina Esfandiary is Senior Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.

Hadi Kahalzadeh is a Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 22 (Summary) — Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy has been guided by the slogan “neither East nor West.” But lately, Iran has prioritized relations with the East, particularly China and Russia, more than with the West. What is driving these growing ties? Does it represent a new alliance of authoritarian regimes? In this Crown Conversation, we speak to Nicole Grajewski, Nader Habibi, and Gary Samore about the significance of Iran’s eastward turn and its impact on the war in Ukraine and the Iran-Israel conflict. They address misconceptions about the countries' shared goals, economic and military cooperation in the face of western sanctions, and impact on the regional balance of power, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

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Nicole Grajewski is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an associate researcher with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Nader Habibi is the Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at the Crown Center.

Gary Samore is the Crown Family Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of the Practice of Politics at Brandeis.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 21 (Summary) — On March 31, 2024, Turkey’s oldest political party, the Republican People’s Party (also known as CHP) surprised many analysts by winning local elections in most major cities and provinces, handing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) their worst electoral defeat in over two decades. We speak with Evren Balta and Zeynep Kadirbeyoğlu about the reasons behind these unexpected results and their implications for Turkey’s political landscape. This Crown Conversation takes us beyond pro- and anti-Erdoğan rhetoric to examine changing voting patterns in Turkey, the significance of local politics in an increasingly authoritarian state, and the challenges that the government and opposition face going forward.

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Evren Balta is professor of International Relations and the chair of the International Relations Department at Özyeğin University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Zeynep Kadirbeyoğlu is a faculty leave fellow at the Crown Center.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 20 (Summary) — Since last year’s release of ChatGPT brought Artificial Intelligence (AI) to public attention, its disruptive and transformative powers have been widely analyzed by experts and the media. These debates, however, have rarely been concerned with the implications of AI for the Middle East, a region of rapidly expanding AI use and development. In this Crown Conversation, we ask Nagla Rizk and Omer Shah to shed light on how AI technologies are being used in Egypt and Saudi Arabia—in areas as varied as agriculture and pilgrimage—and reflect on the possibilities and challenges of AI in the region.

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Nagla Rizk is professor of economics and founding director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo’s School of Business. Her research area is the economics of knowledge, technologies, and development, with a focus on the governance of data and Artificial Intelligence, gender, and inclusive growth in Egypt and MENA.

Omer Shah is the Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Pomona College in the Department of Anthropology. His current book project, Made in Mecca: Expertise, Technology, and Hospitality in the Post-Oil Holy City, examines recent efforts by the Saudi state to intensify and optimize Mecca’s pilgrimage through new sciences and technologies of crowd management, logistics, and hospitality.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 19 (Summary) — On January 11, after months of Houthi attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea in response to the Israel-Hamas War, the US and UK launched air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. As the cycle of attacks and retaliatory strikes stretches into its third week, we spoke with Stacey Philbrick Yadav and Yazeed Al-Jeddawy about what lies behind the conflict, the reaction inside Yemen, and its impact on the ongoing civil war and peace process. Their Crown Conversation offers fresh insights into how the Houthi campaign and the response to it will shape the role the Houthis play in Yemen's political future.

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Stacey Philbrick Yadav is a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center and professor and chair of the International Relations department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Yazeed Al-Jeddawy is the research coordinator at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies in Yemen.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 18 (Summary) — In this two-part Crown Conversation, we asked two Israeli and two Palestinian experts about likely scenarios and outcomes in light of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. These conversations were conducted on October 23 and October 30, 2023 and as such may not reflect the latest developments. But read together, they present a nuanced and complex picture of the long-, medium-, and short-term factors that will shape the current war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and possibilities and limitations for peace.

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Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS), and a former senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Khalil Shikaki is the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and a founding senior fellow at the Crown Center.

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Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Legal Studies at Suffolk University and a former senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Shai Feldman is the Raymond Frankel Professor in Israeli Politics and Society and founding director of the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 17 (Summary) — On September 15, 2020, Israel and two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, signed the Abraham Accords, officially establishing diplomatic relations. Later expanding to include Sudan and Morocco, the Accords represent the first instance of Arab-Israeli normalization since Israel's peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. To mark the third anniversary of the Abraham Accords, we asked Shai Feldman and Sanam Vakil to assess the impact of the Accords on the region, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the prospects of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

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Shai Feldman is the Raymond Frankel Professor in Israeli Politics and Society and founding director of the Crown Center.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.

Ramyar D. Rossoukh is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the director for research at the Crown Center and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History.

Crown Conversation 16 (Summary) — Over its 40-year history, the Lebanese party Hezbollah developed sophisticated military and organizational capabilities that have elevated it to be the most influential non-state actor in the Middle East. These capabilities make it the lynchpin of the so-called Axis of Resistance, the network of states and militias in the region that are closely allied with Iran. In this Crown Conversation, Mohammad Ataie discusses shifts in Hezbollah’s popularity and cross-sectarian appeal, and how Hezbollah's conflicts in its formative years with many of its current allies shaped the party that exists today.

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Mohammad Ataie is a junior research fellow at the Crown Center.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 15 (Summary) — In April, the two main warring parties in Yemen — the Houthi movement and the Government of Yemen — agreed to a two-month truce brokered by the United Nations that has since been extended twice. After the initial truce, Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi handed power to an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council, a development that many Yemenis and observers hope will lead to an end of almost eight years of war in the country. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke with Yasmeen al-Eryani and Stacey Philbrick Yadav about efforts to end the war, the importance of inclusion in peacebuilding, and the myriad ways in which conflict and international humanitarian efforts have changed the nature of research in Yemen.

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Yasmeen al-Eryani is the director of research at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies in Yemen. She is a PhD candidate in social anthropology at Tampere University, Finland.



Stacey Philbrick Yadav is a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center and an associate professor of international relations at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 14 (Summary) — After the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, the Islamist movement Ennahda reemerged in Tunisia and frequently has been the largest party in the parliament and kingmaker in coalition governments. Consequently, it has borne the brunt of many Tunisians' growing disenchantment with their post-revolutionary political system. Since President Kais Saied's power grab in July 2021 and subsequent dissolution of parliament, Ennahda and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, have tried to oppose the coup without triggering a violent crackdown by the state or alienating allies and party members. Nonetheless, in the lead-up to a national referendum scheduled for July 25 to approve a new draft constitution, Tunisian courts imposed a travel ban on Ghannouchi and froze various Ennahda leaders' bank accounts. In this Crown Conversation, the third in a series on Tunisia, we spoke with Andrew F. March — who has interviewed Ghannouchi extensively and is co-writing a book with him — about the history of Ennahda, how it has responded to Saied's actions, and where the movement goes from here.

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Andrew F. March is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was previously the Goldman Faculty Leave Fellow at the Crown Center from 2020-2021.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 13 (Summary) — Running as a populist, Kais Saied, a retired law professor and political independent, was elected president of Tunisia in October 2019. After suspending parliament and dismissing the prime minister on July 25, 2021, Saied has further tightened his hold on power by announcing he would rule by decree, reconfiguring the Supreme Judicial Court, and laying out a roadmap to revise the constitution. These moves — called a "coup" by some and a "correction" by others — threaten Tunisia's decade-old democratic transition. In the second of a series of Crown Conversations on Tunisia, we spoke with Hind Ahmed Zaki about how Tunisians' disenchantment with their post-revolutionary political system led to the election of Saied as president, public support for his power-grab, and how the country's women's rights movement has reacted to his appointment of the Arab world's first female prime minister.

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Hind Ahmed Zaki is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. She was previously the Harold Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center from 2018-2019.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 12 (Summary) — Israel’s position in the Middle East is changing. The UAE’s announcement in August 2020 that it would normalize relations with Israel — formalized the following month in the Abraham Accords Declaration — sparked a series of similar agreements between Israel and several Arab states. The perception of U.S. disengagement with the region has led countries to reconsider alliances and rivalries. And the election of new leaders in the U.S. and Israel heralds a possible reset in relations between those states. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke with Chuck Freilich about what these changes mean for Israel’s security and role in the Middle East.

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Chuck Freilich is the Goldman Visiting Senior Fellow at the Crown Center and a former deputy national security adviser in Israel.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 11 (Summary) — Ebrahim Raisi assumed office as the eighth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Aug. 3, after winning the June presidential election. Replacing the centrist Hassan Rouhani, Raisi is often described as a conservative hardliner and ally of Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. Raisi's administration faces a myriad of challenges, including a floundering economy that remains under U.S. sanctions, the potential for renewed urban unrest, and one of the deadliest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke with Nader Habibi and Amir Mahdavi about the administration's domestic and foreign policies and what they reveal about the direction in which the Islamic Republic is headed.

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Nader Habibi is the Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at the Crown Center.

Amir Mahdavi (GSAS MA '19), is an Iranian journalist, former member of the central council of a reformist party in Iran, and currently a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut. He was a researcher at the Crown Center from 2015 to 2016.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 10 (Summary) — In May 2021, Israel and Hamas exchanged heavy fire, leading to the deaths of 10 Israelis, three foreign workers and approximately 260 Palestinians, with many more injured. Events in Jerusalem were the immediate trigger for this round of violence, which provided Hamas an opportunity to assert itself as the guardian of Palestinian and Arab rights far beyond Gaza. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke with Shai Feldman about how the May conflict impacted Hamas and Israel domestically and internationally, as well as the prospects for change in their relationship.

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Shai Feldman is president of Sapir Academic College in Sha'ar Hanegev (near Sderot), Israel; founding director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies; and professor of politics at Brandeis University.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 9 (Summary) — On July 25 — Tunisia's Republic Day — President Kais Saied dismissed the country's prime minister and government, froze parliament for 30y days, suspended lawmakers' parliamentary immunity, and announced that he (alongside a yet-to-be-named prime minister) will temporarily exert executive authority "until social peace returns to Tunisia and until we save the state." A 30-day curfew was announced the following day. In the first of a series of Crown Conversations on Tunisia, we spoke with Eva Bellin about the challenges of governance in Tunisia and what President Saied’s actions mean for its fledgling democracy.

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Eva Bellin is the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics at the Crown Center and chair of the Department of Politics at Brandeis University.

David Siddhartha Patel is a senior fellow at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 8 (Summary) — In late March, Iran and China signed a 25-year strategic accord that calls for China to invest a reported US$400 billion in various sectors in Iran in exchange for a regular, and presumably discounted, supply of Iranian oil. The partnership also envisions increased bilateral trade and deepening military cooperation between the two countries. In this Crown Conversation, we spoke with two experts on Iran at the Crown Center — Nader Habibi and Hadi Kahalzadeh — about factors that led to the agreement, opposition to it inside Iran, and what it means for the region. 

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Nader Habibi is the Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at the Crown Center.

Hadi Kahalzadeh is a doctoral fellow at the Crown Center and a PhD candidate in social policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 7 (Summary) — Ten years of civil war in Syria has killed an estimated 600,000 people and displaced half of the country’s population. Yet the Syrian regime has proven to be surprisingly durable, and President Bashar al-Asad remains in power in Damascus. In this Crown Conversation, we asked Syria expert Daniel Neep what the conflict teaches us about how the Syrian regime works and Bashar’s role in it, ethnic and religious dynamics, and whether the war is finally coming to an end.

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Daniel Neep is a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center and the American Druze Foundation  Research Fellow in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 6 (Summary) —President Joe Biden says that the U.S. will rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal if Iran returns to "strict compliance" with its terms. His administration then intends to seek to extend and strengthen the nuclear deal as well as reach agreements on limits to Iran’s missile program and regional interventions. In this Crown Conversation, we speak with Gary Samore, a former U.S. official responsible for nuclear nonproliferation, about the continued relevance of the original deal, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and the prospects for successful follow-up negotiations.

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Gary Samore is the Crown Family Director of the Crown Center.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 5 (Summary) — Ten years ago this week, Egyptians began a series of mass protests that quickly brought down President Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for almost 30 years. The subsequent years were contentious, and an uneven transition to democracy ended when the military assumed power in 2013. Today, Egyptians remain deeply divided over the legacy of the Jan. 25 Revolution. In this Crown Conversation, we asked three scholars of Egypt — Youssef El Chazli, Hannah Elsisi and Neil Ketchley — to reflect on how and why the revolution occurred, the ways it changed politics and society, and its lasting imprint on the everyday lives of Egyptians.

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Youssef El Chazli is a junior research fellow at the Crown Center.

Hannah Elsisi is a research fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

Neil Ketchley is an associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 4 (Summary) — The largest and most sustained demonstrations in Iraq’s post-Ba‘th era began in early October 2019, which led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. After five months without a government and several failed attempts by other nominees to form one, journalist and intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi became Iraq’s new prime minister in May. In this Crown Conversation, as the premier approaches 100 days in office, we asked Kanan Makiya to reflect on the forces that brought Kadhimi to power, his mandate, and the challenges he faces. In 2003, Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an NGO dedicated to issues of remembrance, violence, and identity formation in Iraq; Kadhimi directed that foundation from 2003-10.

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Kanan Makiya is a senior fellow at the Crown Center and professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book, On Cruelty (in Arabic, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut, 2020), explores the phenomenon of cruelty in politics and grew out of a course he taught each spring at Brandeis.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 3 (Summary) — The killing of an African-American man, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis on May 25 triggered a wave of protests and acts of civil disobedience throughout the United States. These protests were accompanied by demonstrations of solidarity across the globe. In this Crown Conversation, we asked three members of the Crown Center research team — Hayal Akarsu, Yazan Doughan and Youssef El Chazli — to reflect on how their research on related topics in Turkey, Jordan and Egypt sheds light on aspects of this global moment of mobilization, demand for police reform and reexamination of racial and social inequalities.

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Hayal Akarsu is a junior research fellow at the Crown Center.

Yazan Doughan is the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center.

Youssef El Chazli is a junior research fellow at the Crown Center.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the director for research at the Crown Center and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History at Brandeis.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 2 (Summary) — Iran has been one of the worst hit countries by the current global outbreak of a coronavirus disease (officially known as COVID-19), with the World Health Organization acknowledging over 4,200 deaths and 68,000 confirmed cases in the country as of April 11, 2020. In this Crown Conversation, we discuss the political and historical context of the crisis, including the Iranian government’s response to it, with Orkideh Behrouzan, a medical anthropologist and physician and the author of "Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran" (Stanford University Press, 2016).

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Orkideh Behrouzan is a faculty leave fellow at the Crown Center and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS University of London.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the director for research at the Crown Center and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History at Brandeis.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Crown Conversation 1 (Summary) — Our first Crown Conversation, "Iran, Iraq and Lebanon after Soleimani," was organized and edited by Naghmeh Sohrabi and David Siddhartha Patel and features Maryam Alemzadeh, David Siddhartha Patel and Kelly Stedem. It focuses on the targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qasim Soleimani and others by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020 and its short- and medium-term effects on domestic politics in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.

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Maryam Alemzadeh is the Harold Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center.

David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.

Kelly Stedem is a doctoral fellow at the Crown Center and a PhD candidate in politics at Brandeis.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the director for research at the Crown Center and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History at Brandeis.