Cody Englander
Staff Writer
At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, Vali R. Nasr returns to Chautauqua to continue Week Eight’s Chautauqua Lecture Series’ theme, “The Middle East: The Gulf States’ Emerging Influence.” He will lead a discussion about the state of play in the Gulf States and the role of the United States in the region.
Nasr, an Iranian-American political commentator, was born in Iran, immigrating to the United States after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
From 2009 to 2011, Nasr was a senior adviser to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. From 2012 to 2019, he served as the dean of John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Nasr currently serves as the Majd Khadduri Professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at John Hopkins SAIS.
Nasr is the writer of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History; The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat; The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future; and co-author of Democracy in Iran and How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare.
He penned articles for scholarly journals and written commentary for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Nasr is a member of Global Board of Trustees of Asia Society, was named a Carnegie Scholar and received grants from both the Frank Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation. He was selected as the Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress for 2024–2025 and has been a previous contributor to Chautauqua Institution’s Middle East Update and Chautauqua Lecture Series.
In 2013, he published an article for Foreign Policy titled “The Inside Story of How the White House Let Diplomacy Fail in Afghanistan.” He described his time as part of the Obama administration as “a deeply disillusioning experience.”
As a political commentator, he was interviewed on-air by CNN on June 19 regarding diplomacy in the Israel-Iran conflict.
“Well, I think there’s a lot of tough talk by President Trump, by Iranians, by Israelis,” said Nasr. “But I think the war is entering a very, very critical phase. Israel has done a lot of damage to Iran, but has fallen short of its war goals. It hasn’t been able to destroy Iran’s nuclear program completely. And even though it’s assassinated a lot of Iran’s top military leaders, they’re still
fighting. And the state, it hasn’t collapsed.”
Since then, he correctly predicted the aversion of any further major declaration of war through the perspective of Israel, Iran and the United States As always, war is largely unpredictable. He explained his diplomatic position in conversation with Big Think.
“You either let Iran go nuclear, or you have to get in a war with Iran, which can open the gates of hell in the Middle East, essentially,” Nasr said. “Now if those are your only options, I think talking should be given its chance, even if that change is very little.”
This quote — from December 2007 — gives insight into a persisting global conflict over 17 years later. Predictions like these have earned Nasr a nickname from The Kingston Whig Standard: Shrewd forecaster.
