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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 BBC Persian reports that Iran has significantly expanded its ideological, cultural and economic sphere of influence in Afghanistan’s western province of Nimroz and is inflaming sectarian tension in the province.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei broke his silence today and ridiculed President Donald Trump, thanking the “newcomer” U.S.
A senior official of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has confirmed the shipment of five kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium from Russia to the Iranian province of Esfahan.
A senior member of Iran’s parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission and former Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) official has warned that if Washington “makes any mistake,” Iran will attack Israel and U.S. military bases across the Middle East. “The Fifth Fleet of the U.S.
As the Trump administration is attempting to push back against Iran’s controversial ballistic missile program and the country’s support for regional terrorist and sectarian groups, the Islamic Republic appears to be only escalating its provocative actions against the U.S. and its regional allies.
A human rights organization reports that the Iranian regime executed at least 87 people last month, including two men who were convicted when they were under 18. According to data compiled by the Iran Human Rights (IHR), the Iranian authorities announced only 19 of the 87 executions.
Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has called for an investigation into the latest reports of the Iranian government’s ties with the Taliban, the Afghan media reports.
On February 3, two senior Iranian leaders bragged that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) and its foreign sectarian militia forces have inflicted a heavy defeat on the U.S. and its allied forces in conflict zones in the Middle East and South Asia.
In reaction to President Donald Trump’s tweet this morning that said “Iran is playing with fire,” Iranian civilian and military officials doubled down on their defiance of U.S. and international demands to curb their controversial missile program, which Washington says violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231.
A representative of the Zoroastrian minority in the Iranian parliament has protested at acts of “insult and defamation” against his community and called on the government to protect the rights of Zoroastrians and prevent inflammatory speech against them by the country’s influential clerics and local authorities.
Iran’s civilian and military leaders today dismissed threats from the Trump administration and vowed to continue and increase the country’s controversial missile activity. “Every day Iran will increase the number of its missiles, warships and defense missile launchers.
The United Arab Emirates has summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires to protest Iran’s arming of Houthi rebels in Yemen, Iranian and
