Experts in the News

"If there is no middle ground solution and Baku tries to establish that corridor with the use of force, Iran will not be as passive as it was in 2020," fellow Mohammad Tabaar told Middle East Eye of the recent rising tensions between Baku and Yerevan. "This time it will act."

The demonstrations sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini signal a tipping point in Iran, where many feel they have exhausted all electoral — and possibly nonviolent — ways of pursuing change, writes Middle East fellow Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar.

Middle East fellow Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar was interviewed for a New York Times explainer on the longevity of Iran's hard-line governments — against isolation abroad, internal turmoil veering on civil war and devastating wars. “It’s not despite these crises but actually precisely because of them that the regime survives,” with each episode ending with the country’s most powerful leaders and institutions rallying behind the status quo order, and with challengers sidelined, Tabaar said.

"The low turnout and the conservative victory in the parliamentary elections in Iran indicate intense electoral disenchantment and set the stage for the ascendance of a hard-liner as president," wrote fellow Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar.

The BBC and other news outlets report that Russia is using Iranian air bases to launch air strikes against Syria. “Historians and American officials said that the Iranian decision to let Russia base its planes and support operations in Iran — even temporarily — was a historic one,” wrote the New York Times.

Middle East fellow Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar anticipated the alliance last year, noting in an article for Foreign Affairs that Iran's internal balance of power was shifting to the country's hardline conservatives who see Vladimir Putin as a reliable partner.

Click here for Tabaar's Nov. 2015 analysis and learn what’s behind the new level of cooperation between Iran and Russia.