Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is a visiting scholar at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is 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 areas include international security and Middle East politics.

He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018). His articles have appeared in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Global Security Studies, Political Science Quarterly, and International Studies Review among others. Mohammad has also written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has taught courses on U.S. foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, Middle East politics, and religion and politics in Iran. He is the recipient of the 2019 Faculty Excellence Award at the Bush School. Mohammad has a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Tehran, an M.A. in sociology from the New School for Social Research, an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.