Since the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and imposed ever more draconian sanctions on Iran, the Middle East has become even more unstable and Iran has become more aggressive both in its region and in its treatment of domestic opponents. US allies increasingly doubt American willingness to come to their aid but one silver lining could be an increased willingness on the part of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to negotiate directly with Iran over energy and maritime security. Sanctions, meanwhile, have taken a harsh toll on ordinary Iranians who have risen up against their government to protest the poor economy and have met with violent repression. Iran's allies -- Iraq and Lebanon in particular -- are also facing popular uprisings by a generation that is fed up with corruption and entrenched elites.
Barbara Slavin is the director of the Future of Iran Initiative and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University and a columnist for Al-Monitor.com The author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (2007), she is a regular commentator on US foreign policy and Iran on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN.
A career journalist, Barbara Slavin has covered such key foreign policy issues as the US-led war on terrorism, policy toward “rogue” states, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. She has traveled to Iran nine times. Slavin also served as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she wrote Bitter Friends, and as a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, where she researched and wrote the report:
Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts Its Influence in the Middle East.
