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Ahmad Khalid Majidyar is a Middle East & South Asia analyst with a focus on Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was previously a senior fellow and the director of IranObserved Project at the Middle East Institute.
From 2008 to 2015, Majidyar worked as a senior research associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he co-authored two monographs on Iran: Iranian Influence in the Levant, Egypt, Iraq and Afghanistan (AEI 2012), and The Shi’ites of the Middle East: An Iranian fifth column? (AEI 2014). He also published a number of research papers on Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As an instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School’s Leadership Development and Education for Sustained Peace program (2008-2016), Majidyar provided graduate-level seminars to more than 3,000 U.S. and NATO military leaders on Afghanistan and the broader region. In addition, he has provided briefings on Iran and Afghanistan at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint IED Defeat Organization, the National Defense University, the State Department, and Congress; and he has spoken as a guest analyst at think tanks, universities, and world affairs councils.
Majidyar’s articles on Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been published in Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, Fox News, U.S. News & World Report, Daily Telegraph, and Forbes, among others. He has also discussed Middle Eastern topics on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera English, Sky News, CBC Canada, Bloomberg News and Voice of America’s Dari, Farsi, Urdu and English services.
Previously, Majidyar worked as a media analyst with the BBC Monitoring in Afghanistan and as a humanitarian aid worker with the UNHCR in Pakistan.
The Hashd al-Shaabi – Iraqi paramilitary forces known as the Popular Mobilization Forces – captured an air base from the Islamic State on Thursday, the Iranian media reports.
Just hours before the news of U.S. airstrikes in Syria broke out, Iran’s Fars News Agency (F.N.A.) reported that the Lebanese Hezbollah had dispatched 3,000 fighters near the border-crossing al-Tanf passageway along Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan to “thwart the U.S. plots” and take the control of the Palmyra-Baghdad road.
Earlier today, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced new sanctions against nine American individuals and entities for sponsoring terrorism or action aga
An article in Tasnim News Agency says Iran’s “military diplomacy” was instrumental in compelling Pakistan to take concrete actions against terrorist groups. “After the attack by terrorist groups that martyred 10 Iranian border guards, it was the powerful words of Major General [Mohammad] Bagheri that made Pakistani political leaders to take practical actions to control the borders,” wrote the outlet, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.).
Latest reports about increased U.S.
A lengthy report in Fars News Agency (F.N.A.), an outlet close to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.), claims that the United States is seeking to contain the growing influence of Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Syria by increasing its military presence in northern and southern Syria and keeping
President Donald Trump’s planned trip to Saudi Arabia has triggered concern in Tehran. Iranian officials and media outlets appear to be particularly troubled by Riyadh’s decision to invite leaders of dozens of Muslim countries to attend a summit with the American president. Many Iranian leaders and analysts say Washington, Israel and Sunni Gulf nations want to establish an “Arab NATO” or “American-Arab NATO” to confront Iran’s power and influence in the region.
The hardline Iranian media – particularly outlets affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) – has attacked President Hassan Rouhani for pledging to make efforts to remove remaining U.S. sanctions against Iran if reelected.
A commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, Sarbast Lazkeen, has cautioned that any further expansion of Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (P.M.F.) toward the Syrian border and into Kurdish regions could prompt a direct military intervention by Turkey, Saudi Arabia or the United States.
The Lebanese Hezbollah has dispatched hundreds of its fighters in two main fronts in southern Syria near the border with Jordan, according to Fars News Agency, an outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.).
