The Iran Podcast

Negar Mortazavi speaks to Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, and Sina Toosi, Senior Fellow, at the Center for International Policy, about the Israel-Hamas war, the Biden administration’s policy, and the role of Iran and its regional allies.

Negar Mortazavi speaks to Nader Hashemi, Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at Georgetown University.

Negar Mortazavi speaks to Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC.

Negar Mortazavi speaks with Alex Vatanka about Iran’s domestic politics and mass protests, the crisis of legitimacy and the issue of leadership succession, Tehran’s deescalation with Washington and regional engagement with Arab rivals, and the continuous shift to the East towards Russia and China. Guest: Alex Vatanka, Director of Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, and author of “The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979”.

A year has passed since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran. This panel discusses the current state of Iran’s domestic dissent, Tehran’s foreign policy and shift to the East, the prisoner swap and nuclear tensions with the US, and Iran’s engagement with its regional rivals. Negar Mortazavi joins Farnaz Fassihi from the New York Times, Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association, Nader Hashemi from Georgetown University, and Barbara Slavin at the Stimson Center in Washington. (More details: www.stimson.org/event/iran-one-year-after-the-death-of-mahsa-amini/)

In this episode we discuss Iran’s shift to the East towards big powers in Asia, mainly Russia and China, and engaging with regional rivals like Saudi Arabia, and most recently joining the BRICS, and what this all means in a shifting global order. Host Negar Mortazavi speaks to Nicole Grajewsky at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Mathieu Droin at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Washington and Tehran have reached a deal to swap prisoners and unblock Iran’s frozen assets in South Korea. Iran will release a number of American prisoners in exchange for the U.S. releasing a number of Iranian prisoners and unblocking $6 billion of Iranian funds to be used for humanitarian transactions. What does this agreement mean for each side? Will this be a prelude for more deescalation between Iran and the U.S.?  Negar Mortazavi speaks to Stephen Miles, the president of Win Without War, a coalition of organizations that work for a more peaceful and progressive U.S. foreign policy. He previously worked for the global campaigning organization Avaaz, was the Executive Director of the American Hellenic Council, and has worked on multiple federal, state, and local electoral campaigns.

Negar Mortazavi speaks with Annie Tracy Samuel about the history and formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the role of the guards after the revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war, and how the group has evolved into a prominent organization today that influences Iran’s foreign and security policies. Our guest is Annie Tracy Samuel, Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who specializes in the modern history of Iran and the Middle East. She is the author of The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Negar Mortazavi speaks to Murtaza Hussain, a senior reporter at The Intercept and co-host of the Intercepted podcast, about Biden’s policy towards Iran and how he kept Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions that discourage even legal, humanitarian trade.

Negar Mortazavi speaks to Zep Kalb at the department of sociology at UCLA about Iran’s labor movement and recent rounds of labor protests, and how the Iranian state relies on labor support, bargains with workers, and responds to labor protests. The Iran Podcast is fiscally sponsored by the Center for International Policy in Washington.