Trita Parsi
Trita Parsi is a prominent Iranian-American political scientist, foreign policy analyst, and award-winning author. He is the Executive Vice President and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank championing military restraint and diplomacy. Parsi is also the founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Founder
Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International StudiesVali Nasr
Vali Nasr is a prominent Iranian-American scholar and leading authority on Middle Eastern geopolitics and Shia Islam. Currently the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS, where he served as dean from 2012 to 2019, Nasr brings both academic expertise and practical policy experience to his field, including time as a senior advisor for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Known for his work as a commentator, author, and senior advisor at CSIS, he has written influential books such as The Shia Revival.
Jamal Abdi is the President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and Executive Director of NIAC Action. Based in Washington, D.C., he leads grassroots advocacy to advance peace, immigrant rights, and the Iranian-American civic voice. He previously served as a U.S. Congressional policy advisor on foreign affairs and defense. An expert on U.S.-Iran relations, his written commentary is featured in outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and Foreign Policy.
Marketing DirectorJamal abdi
Robert Malley is a prominent American foreign policy expert, diplomat, and conflict resolution specialist. He served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Iran under the Biden administration, playing a key role in negotiations regarding the Iran nuclear deal. Malley previously held senior national security and Middle East policy roles in the Obama and Clinton administrations, and has authored significant publications on U.S. diplomacy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
former United States Special Envoy for Iranrobert malley
Fatemeh sadeghi
Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity at University College LondonDr. Fatemeh Sadeghi is a political scientist and sociologist specializing in political imagination, gender studies, and decolonial feminist theories in the Global South. She currently serves as a Senior Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity in London, focusing her work on the imaginative dimensions of politics, constitutional thought, and social power dynamics in Iran
assal rad
Dr. Assal Rad is a scholar of modern Middle Eastern history and political analyst who received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Specializing in contemporary Iran and U.S. foreign policy, she is a fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC and DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now).
Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC
Dr. Negar Razavi is a political anthropologist, Princeton University research scholar, and senior researcher at Security in Context. She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing her research on critical security, gender, empire, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Her academic work specifically analyzes how Washington think tanks and foreign policy experts shape transnational security strategies.
Political AnthropologistNegar razavi
Dr. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi is a Swiss-Iranian historian and Reader in History at King's College London, specializing in nationalism, race, and intellectual history. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and is best known for developing the concept of "dislocative nationalism." This theory analyzes how nineteenth-century thinkers used European racial theories to construct an Aryan identity for Iran, aiming to dislodge the nation from its Middle Eastern reality. His research also heavily focuses on the historical intersections and commonalities between antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Associate Professor and Historian of Nationalism and Race at King's College London