Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Arang Keshavarzian

Arang Keshavarzian is a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University.

The Limits of Protection and Profits—Five Years into the Abraham Accords — A billboard in Tel Aviv in June 2025 by the “Coalition for Regional Security” Israeli political-security initiative depicting (L to R) leaders of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United States, Israel, UAE, Oman, Morocco and Bahrain, with the Hebrew slogan “A time for war, a time for settlement; now is the time for the ‘Abrahamic Covenant.'” Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

Issue 315-316

The Limits of Protection and Profits—Five Years into the Abraham Accords

A Review of Elham Fakhro’s ‘The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization.’

Arang Keshavarzian • 11 min read

The Politics of “Unskilled" Labor in Qatar—An Interview with Natasha Iskander — Workers inside the Lusail stadium, constructed for the 2022 World Cup, Doha, Qatar, 2019. Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

MER Article

The Politics of “Unskilled" Labor in Qatar—An Interview with Natasha Iskander

With the approach of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Natasha Iskander speaks to Arang Keshavarzian about the politics of labor that underpin the tournament – and their devastating effects. From the deliberate framing of migrant workers as “unskilled” to the regulation of workers protests, minimal refor

Natasha Iskander, Arang Keshavarzian • 14 min read

The Politics of “Unskilled" Labor in Qatar—An Interview with Natasha Iskander — Workers inside the Lusail stadium, constructed for the 2022 World Cup, Doha, Qatar, 2019. Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Current Analysis

The Politics of “Unskilled" Labor in Qatar—An Interview with Natasha Iskander

With the approach of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Natasha Iskander speaks to Arang Keshavarzian about the politics of labor that underpin the tournament – and their devastating effects. From the deliberate framing of migrant workers as “unskilled” to the regulation of workers protests, minimal refor

Natasha Iskander, Arang Keshavarzian • 14 min read

Generational Dislocation and Academic Solidarity—Aslı Bâli on MESA’s Global Academy — Academics lay down their gowns during a protest against the dismissal of colleagues from universities following a post-coup emergency decree, in the Cebeci campus of Ankara University in Ankara, Turkey, 2017. Umit Bektas/Reuters

MER Article

Generational Dislocation and Academic Solidarity—Aslı Bâli on MESA’s Global Academy

The last ten years have seen a precipitous decline in conditions for academics across the Middle East. With campuses under literal fire in some places and extraordinary repression and authoritarian crackdowns in others, research, writing and teaching have become nearly impossible in many places.

Aslı Bâli, Arang Keshavarzian • 13 min read

Current Analysis

Lessons Learned (and Ignored)

On May 23, 1997, Mohammad Khatami, who had spent most of the 1990s as head of the National Library, defeated Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, the speaker of Parliament, to become president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The election was a turning point in post-revolutionary history—the underdog beat the

Naghmeh Sohrabi, Arang Keshavarzian • 19 min read

MER Article

The Iran Deal as Social Contract

For years discussion of Iran’s nuclear program and how best to address the surrounding impasse focused on international relations—chiefly, the extent to which the United States and the Islamic Republic could and should trust each other to reach a negotiated settlement. Amidst all the conjecture, the

Arang Keshavarzian • 12 min read

MER Article

A War on Multiple Fronts

Lasting from 1980 to 1988, the war between Iran and Iraq was the longest inter-state war of the twentieth century. Yet standard narratives of the war, or of Iranian and Iraqi political history, for that matter, barely discuss the war’s legacy for the structure of the two states in question or the wa

Arang Keshavarzian, Nida Alahmad • 29 min read

MER Article

How Islamic Was the Revolution?

Like all revolutions, the 1979 revolution in Iran is too complex to be captured by a single adjective. It has come to be known as the “Islamic” Revolution, for it authored a regime ruling in the name of Islam and with the utopian mission of creating a just and pure

Arang Keshavarzian • 2 min read

MER Article

The UAE's Space Race

At a 2007 Harvard workshop focusing on sustainable architecture in the Persian Gulf, the assembled academics and practitioners quizzed a public relations official from a large Abu Dhabi real estate developer. The workshop participants, among them experts in the field of sustainable development, were

Ahmed Kanna, Arang Keshavarzian • 13 min read

MER Article

The Muslim World Is Not Flat

This 1995 CIA map, often used in the media and in classrooms, reminds us that today Shi‘i Muslims are concentrated in only a few nation-states—Iran, Iraq, the Arab Gulf states, Azerbaijan and Lebanon in the Middle East, and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in South Asia. There are also numerous ‘Alaw

Arang Keshavarzian • 2 min read

MER Article

Masoud

A participant's memoir reveals sordid inner details about the Iranian anti-Islamic Republic Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), which continues to attract the attention of regime-change advocates in Washington.

Arang Keshavarzian • 4 min read