Iran on the Brink? Examining U.S. Intentions and Regional Implications

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Join the Institute of Politics for a timely virtual panel discussion examining the ongoing protests in Iran, options before the United States, the future of the regime, and what it all means for the region and beyond. As Iran faces a rapidly evolving political and security landscape, this virtual webinar will bring together leading policymakers and experts to assess the latest developments and their implications. Join us for this timely and in-depth discussion moderated by Ned Price, featuring perspectives from senior national security officials and scholars with deep expertise.

Featuring:

• Phil Gordon
  Sydney Stein, Jr Scholar at the Brookings Institution
  Former Assistant to the President and National Security Adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris
• Dr. Lina Khatib
  Visiting Scholar, Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center Middle East Initiative
• Mike Singh
  Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
  Fmr. Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the NSC
• Holly Dagres
  Libitzky Family Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute's Viterbi Program on Iran and U.S. Policy
• Ned Price (Moderator)
  Interim Co-Director, Institute of Politics
  Former Deputy to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, and former Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken

Co-sponsor: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School

About the Panelists

Phil Gordon
Philip H. Gordon is the Sydney Stein, Jr Scholar at the Brookings Institution. He served as Assistant to the President and National Security Adviser to the Vice President during the Biden Administration and as White House Coordinator for the Middle East and the Gulf Region under President Barack Obama. He is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern issues, including Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, which was named a “Book for the Century” by Foreign Affairs.

Dr. Lina Khatib
Dr. Lina Khatib is a visiting scholar with the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative, Principal Analyst at ExTrac, and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. Her previous roles include serving as director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and Professor of Practice at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London; director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House; and director of the Carnegie Middle East Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She also co-founded and previously led the Program on Arab Reform and Development at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and was a senior associate at the Arab Reform Initiative. She has published several books and is a frequent writer and commentator on current affairs in the Middle East. 

Mike Singh
Michael Singh is the Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute, a post he assumed in 2010, and a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council.

During his tenure at the White House from 2005 to 2008, Mr. Singh was responsible for devising and coordinating U.S. national security policy toward the region stretching from Morocco to Iran, with a particular emphasis on Iran’s nuclear and regional activities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, and security cooperation in the broader Middle East. Previously, Mr. Singh served as special assistant to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and at the U.S. embassy in Israel.

Holly Dagres
Holly Dagres is the Libitzky Family Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute's Viterbi Program on Iran and U.S. Policy. Previously a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs, Dagres edited the IranSource and MENASource publications and led a working group on human rights, society, and the environment for the bipartisan report The Future of U.S. Strategy Toward Iran: A Roadmap for the Next Administration.

Dagres also curates The Iranist, a widely read weekly newsletter on Iran, and contributes to Operation Environment Watch. Her groundbreaking report, Iranians on #SocialMedia, and her TEDxTalk on the topic have established her as a leading voice on Iranian social movements and generational change. She has been featured in interviews across radio, television, and print, including the Associated Press, BBC News, CNN, NPR, Fox News, and The New York Times. Her work twice earned recognition on the Middle East Policy Council's "40 under 40" list. An Iranian-American who spent her teenage years in Iran and graduated from Tehran International School, Dagres returned to the United States to attend UCLA and later earned a master's degree from the American University in Cairo.

Ned Price (Moderator)
Ned Price during the Biden Administration was the Deputy to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, overseeing the U.S. Mission to the United Nations’ Washington office and, as a Deputy Cabinet-level official, serving as a standing member of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee. Price began his most recent stint in government at the Department of State in January 2021, when he assumed the role of Department Spokesperson, a title he held until March 2023. He then served as Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken until he took on his leadership role with the U.S. Mission to the UN.

Prior to the Biden Administration, Price was Co-Founder and Director of Policy and Communications at National Security Action, a non-profit advocacy organization. During the Obama Administration, he served as Special Assistant to President Obama on the National Security Council staff, where he also was the Spokesperson and Senior Director for Strategic Communications. He previously was at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was a senior analyst and Spokesperson. He has been an NBC News analyst and contributor and taught at Georgetown University and The George Washington University. He graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and received a Master’s from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is originally from Dallas, Texas, and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.