Banafsheh Keynoush

Banafsheh Keynoush is a foreign affairs scholar and a fellow at the International Institute for Iranian Studies. She conducted fieldwork in the Middle East for two decades, was recently a visiting scholar at Princeton University, and a visiting fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. Dr. Keynoush is the author of Saudi Arabia and Iran: Friends or Foes? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, also available in Arabic and Persian), the editor and an author of Iran’s Interregional Dynamics in the Near East (Peter Lang, 2021), and the author of The World Powers and Iran: Before, During and After the Nuclear Deal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Her latest report, the Archival History of Iran’s Diplomatic Relations with Saudi Arabia (September 2023) reviews the shared history of the two regional countries from 1913 to 1979. She is a team member of the Carnegie-funded Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation Project, the president of Mideast Analysts, and she has advised and worked with the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asia Foundation, Chevron Corporation, CNN International, and European policy centers. She is also an accredited interpreter at the European Commission, was a chief interpreter for Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi from 2003 to 2010, and an interpreter in a number of dual-track international peace talks.