Nazee Moinian holds a PhD in political science/Iran Studies from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She is an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. Additionally she completed two Masters degrees from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
She previously consulted on Iranian affairs to the Council on Foreign Relations, where she interviewed foreign diplomats and acted as a liaison between the country’s political figures and their western counterparts. In 2001, Nazee became a United Nations envoy for a variety of Jewish non-profit organizations.
She has helped produce several acclaimed documentaries, including 2020’s Nasrin, about the imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, as well as 2012’s The Iranian-Americans, which aired on PBS. Her writing has appeared in the NYPOST, NY Daily News, the Hill, Real Clear Politics, the Jerusalem Post, to name a few. She has also appeared on CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, NPR, News Nation, News Max, and international media outlets.
A native Iranian, Nazee was raised in Tehran and immigrated with her family to the United States at the onset of the 1979 revolution. She is fluent in English, French, Farsi, and Arabic, with a working knowledge of Italian. She lives in New York City with her husband and children.
The United States has long confused Iran for a rational actor with a low pain threshold, sensitive to battlefield losses and vulnerable to domestic unrest, which would bring it to the negotiating table. Each of those assumptions is wrong.
“يبدو أن كل شيء له علاقة بالمؤتمر في تركيا مازال مُعلقًا”.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
“رغم أن الولايات المُتحدة عادت للمسار الدبلوماسي مع إيران، إلا أن إصرار طهران على انتهاك الاتفاق النووي، وتطوير قدراتها العسكرية الخطيرة، سيؤدي فقط إلى زيادة عزلة إيران”.
From Israel/Palestine and Lebanon to Iran and Afghanistan, there are a number of areas where the Trump administration may make policy moves before leaving office on Jan. 20. Experts from across MEI weigh in with their thoughts on what to watch out for over the next seven weeks.
It should come as no surprise that Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei is once again predicting America’s “political, civil and moral decline” in the wake of the U.S. elections. But the regime’s preemptive attacks on President-elect Biden as an “iron fist in a velvet glove” and its demands that his administration “compensate for past mistakes” mark a departure from the Islamic Republic’s more restrained approach to previous transitions — and portend a flurry of commentary coming out of Tehran over the next two months.
