Shaul Bakhash, an Expert on Iran, Joins Brookings as a Visiting Fellow

Professor Shaul Bakhash, one of America’s foremost authorities on Iran, has joined the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution as a visiting fellow.

While at Brookings, Bakhash will conduct research and write about the prospects for internal reform in Iran and the conditions most likely to produce meaningful change.

“The rapidly evolving situation in Iran demands the full attention of both policymakers and the public,” said Ambassador Martin S. Indyk, director of the Saban Center. “Shaul is uniquely qualified to explain where Iran is heading and what U.S. policy there can hope to achieve.”

Bakhash has been the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History at George Mason University since 1985. Before that, he taught at Princeton University. He is the author of Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution; Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform Under the Qajars, 1858-1896; and The Politics of Oil and Revolution in Iran.

Before beginning his academic career, Bakhash was a journalist in Iran, where he wrote for Kayhan Newspapers in Tehran as well as for the Times of London, the Financial Times, and the Economist. He regularly writes for the New York Review of Books, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and New Republic.

Bakhash was a Guggenheim Fellow and has held fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Humanities Center. He received his D.Phil. from Oxford University.