Quick Takes
Quick perspectives on today's pressing topics
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The Fall of Assad: What’s Next for Syria and Lessons from History
Former president Bashar al Assad had ceased to be a significant independent force in the Middle East, and few will mourn his ouster.  The...
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Israel and Hezbollah Trade Fire
Israel’s brazen attacks on Hezbollah last week, in which hundreds of pagers and two-way radios exploded and killed at least 37 people, graphically...
Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is a non-resident fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. He is also a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. His research focuses on Middle East politics and international security. He has previously been a visiting scholar with the Kennedy School’s Managing the Atom Project.
He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018) and is currently working on several projects on Iran’s regional policy, domestic politics, and nuclear strategy. Over the past two decades, his commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and other major outlets. His academic work on the role of ideology and domestic politics in foreign policy and political violence has been published in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Perspectives on Politics, among others.
Mohammad received his PhD in Government from Georgetown University, an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Social Sciences from the University of Tehran.
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Fellow, Middle East Initiative (2023 - 2024; 2024 - 2025; 2025 - 2026)
Visiting Scholar, Project on Managing the Atom (2023 - 2024; 2024 - 2025)
Programs & Projects
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Program