This seminar will examine how Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has analyzed the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) in its publications on the conflict. It will explain the pervasive and persistent significance of the Iran-Iraq War for the IRGC and will reveal how scholarly oversight of the IRGC's representations of the war has produced inaccurate and oversimplified generalizations about the organization.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Scholarship on U.S. involvement in the Middle East has traditionally maintained that after the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and refused to participate in the League of Nations mandate system, the United States returned to political isolation and watched events in the Middle East passively from the sidelines. This presentation challenges that narrative by arguing that the United States did have both interests in and a policy concerning Iraq during that time. The open door policy the U.S. government set out in the correspondence with Britain in 1920–1921 represents a full and cogent policy on Iraq that was advanced throughout the interwar period to protect American interests and standing in that country.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

The Iran-Iraq War began eighteen months after the establishment of Iran's Islamic Republic and lasted for what now amounts to one quarter of its existence. The war has had a profound impact on all aspects of life in Iran. Non-Iranian studies of the conflict, however, have failed to appreciate the war's significance, in part because scholars have neglected Persian-language sources on the conflict.  Some of the most notable Iranian sources are those produced by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. This seminar will use those sources to examine how the Revolutionary Guards have represented the history of the war and their roles in the conflict.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

The seminar will examine how the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have constructed a particular history or narrative of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). It will analyze the key features of that narrative and how the Revolutionary Guards have translated those features into lessons that should guide Iran's national security policies.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Co-sponsored by the Dubai Initiative