[LCM Events] TOMORROW, 4/15: Ali Banuazizi speaks at the MIT Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar

[Heidi Erickson]

Please join us for the Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar TOMORROW, Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The Nuclear Agreement with Iran and Its Ramifications for the Regional Politics of the Middle East
4:30-6pm | MIT Building E51, Room 057 (70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge)

Speaker: Ali Banuazizi
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in Islamic Civilization and Societies at Boston College


After receiving his Ph. D. from Yale University in 1968, Ali Banuazizi taught at Yale and the University of Southern California before joining the Boston College Faculty in 1971. Since then, he has held visiting appointments and fellowships at the University of Tehran, Princeton, Harvard, and Oxford University, and MIT. He served as the founding editor of the journal of Iranian Studies, from 1968 to 1982. He is a past President of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

Ali Banuazizi is the author of numerous articles on society, culture, and politics in Iran and the Middle East, and the coauthor (with A. Ashraf) of Social Classes, the State and Revolution in Iran (2008, in Persian) and coeditor (with Myron Weiner) of three books on politics, religion and society in Southwest and Central Asia. He is currently associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World.

Abstract:
Ever since the unexpected victory of Hassan Rouhani in last June’s Iranian presidential election, Iran has pursued two broad objectives in its foreign policy: to seek a resolution of its decade-long nuclear disputes with the world powers and to forge better relations with its neighbors in the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East.  The substantial progress that has been made in the nuclear negotiations has raised hopes among many observers that reaching a comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and the five  permanent members of the U. N. Security Council plus Germany later this year would ease the way toward the resolution of other regional conflicts that currently plague the Middle East, to a gradual rapprochement between the U. S. and Iran, and, potentially, to a realignment of international relations within the MENA region. This presumed linkage between a successful diplomatic resolution of the nuclear disputes and a fundamental shift in Iran’s foreign policy and security alignments ignores a number of crucial differences in the incentives, strategic calculations, and ideological maxims that  have helped shape Iran’s stance in these two policy arenas. While the new president’s decision, with the support of the supreme leader, to enter into serious negotiations over the country’s nuclear program was prompted mainly by the crippling impact of international sanctions on the Iranian economy, Iran’s broader security strategy and direct or indirect involvements in the various conflicts in the region—including those in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf—and a willingness to normalize its relations with the U. S. —are subject to a somewhat different set of domestic, regional, and international factors. These include an unremitting fear of and hostility toward Western “cultural assault” on the part of the ruling clerics, a basic  distrust of Western motives and intentions, a long-standing ambition to be recognized as a regional superpower and a principal voice in the Islamic world, the rising sectarian Shi’i-Sunni conflicts in the Middle East, and the countervailing interests of rival powers in the region and their influential lobbies in the West, and the lingering preference for  “regime change” over diplomacy and rapprochement by a significant part of the American political establishment. Given such domestic, regional, and international impediments and conflicting interests, we may well cherish the prospects of a successful nuclear accord, but perhaps should not be too sanguine in our expectations that such an accord would lead to a fundamental change in Iran’s policies toward and involvements in some of the region’s current conflicts—especially those in which the U. S. and its traditional allies are directly involved.


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Direct your questions to hae at mit.edu<mailto:hae at mit.edu>
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