Dr. Ali Fathollah-Nejad is Founder and Director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order (CMEG), a think tank devoted to exploring transformations and promoting a foreign policy that reconciles interests and values. The German-Iranian political scientist focuses on Iran, the Middle East, and the post-unipolar world order. He is also a 2022 McCloy Fellow on Global Trends of the American Council on Germany (ACG). Among his publications are, most recently, The Islamic Republic in Existential Crisis: The Need for a Paradigm Shift in the EU’s Iran Policy (2023, European Union Institute for Security Studies, Chaillot Paper); the much-acclaimed book Iran in an Emerging New World Order: From Ahmadinejad to Rouhani (2021, Palgrave); as well as The Islamic Republic of Iran Four Decades On: The 2017/18 Protests Amid a Triple Crisis (2020, Brookings), wherein he suggested the start of a long-term revolutionary process in Iran. Ali is also the former Iran expert of the Brookings Institution in Doha (BDC, 2017–20), the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP, 2015–18), and the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (AUB-IFI, 2022–24). He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Department of Development Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and was the winner of 2016/17 post-doctoral fellowship of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Iran Project. He taught at, among others, universities in London, Berlin, Doha, Tübingen.

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Twitter Handle: @AFathollahNejad