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Reza H. Akbari is a Research Associate for the Iran program at the Middle East Institute. Reza conducts research on Iranian domestic politics, U.S. foreign policy toward Iran, Shia politics, political transition, and democracy. He has previously served as a Program Officer for a prominent non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. focusing on human rights issues in Iran. He has also served as a Research Assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Project Assistant for Princeton University’s Iran Data Portal.
Reza holds a M.A. in Middle East Studies from The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from the State University of New York at Fredonia. His bachelor’s thesis explores the effects of national identity among Iranians as a potential cause for their failure to construct a viable democratic political structure.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had high hopes for the visit to Tehran by new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. His trip on Thursday for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit might have been brief — his spokesman emphasized ahead of time that he would spend only four hours on Iranian soil, including getting stuck in traffic — but Iran’s leaders relished the opportunity to demonstrate progress in overcoming its isolation in the Arab world and to gain some democratic and revolutionary legitimacy by proxy.
