A Retrospective on Iran
with Behrooz Ghamari
Hosted by Arash Davari and Bassam Haddad
Wednesday, 28 January 2026
1:00 PM EST | 9:00 PM Tehran
[This conversation was recorded on 16 January 2026 and is part of an ongoing Series on Iran]
The Long War on Iran: A Retrospective with Behrooz Ghamari explores Iranian politics over the past half century through the career publications of a leading scholar in the field. Taking Behrooz Ghamari’s work as our touchstone, we explore the meanings and consequences of the 1979 revolution, social movements and struggles for hegemony in the Islamic Republic, and dramatic changes to regional politics over the past half century. In this first session, Ghamari discusses his latest book, The Long War on Iran: New Events, Old Questions (OR Books, 2026) in response to unfolding events in Iran and the region, with attention to the role of the intellectual, the critic, and the writer.
Featuring
Behrooz Ghamari is affiliated with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto. He was Professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024. He is the author of three books on different aspects and historical context of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath: Islam and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Iran (2008); Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment (2016); and Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution, OR Books (2016).
Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad. Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Arash Davari is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press is titled Insurgent Witness: Archetypes of Action in Revolutionary Iran.