The election of President Biden has raised expectations for a restoration of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and a de-escalation of US-Iran tensions. The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland recently completed a poll of Iranian public opinion on these and other relevant issues. The Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative invites you to a discussion of the poll results and their implications for US-Iran diplomacy. The discussion will be held via Zoom on February 24, 2021 from 1:30 - 2:30 pm ET. A link to the meeting will be sent to those who register to attend. The event is open to press and on-the-record.
Biographies:
Nancy Gallagher is the director at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and a research professor in the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. Her current research includes a book project on strategic logics for arms control; public opinion surveys about security policy in the United States, Iran and other countries; initiatives to improve cybersecurity decision-making; and cooperative strategies to reduce nuclear risks and enhance space security. Before coming to the University of Maryland, Gallagher was the executive director of the Clinton administration's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Task Force and worked with the special advisor to the President and the secretary of state to build bipartisan support for US ratification. She has been an arms control specialist in the State Department, a Foster Fellow in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and a faculty member at Wesleyan University. Gallagher is the author of The Politics of Verification (1999) and the editor of Arms Control: New Approaches to Theory and Policy (1998). She has conducted a series of studies about US and Iranian public opinion on the 2015 nuclear deal, and written numerous policy reports, articles and op eds. She won the University of Maryland’s 2015 Research Communication Impact Award, as well as the Outstanding Invention of 2016 award for her development, with Charles Harry, of a cybersecurity risk analysis framework.
Ellie Geranmayeh is a senior policy fellow and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She specializes in European foreign policy in relation to Iran, particularly on the nuclear and regional dossiers and sanctions policy. Geranmayeh advised European governments and companies on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers from 2013-2015 and continues to brief senior policy makers on how to effectively safeguard the implementation of the nuclear agreement. Her research focus also covers wider regional dynamics including post-ISIS stabilization and geopolitical trends in the Middle East. She is regularly quoted by international media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and appears on CNN, Al-Jazeera and the BBC to provide commentary on regional developments. Prior to joining ECFR, Geranmayeh worked at Herbert Smith Freehills law firm. She graduated in Law from the University of Cambridge.
Ilan Goldenberg is Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to CNAS, Goldenberg served as the Chief of Staff to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations at the US Department of State. Goldenberg previously served as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. From 2009 to 2012, Goldenberg served first as a Special Advisor on the Middle East and then as the Iran Team Chief in the Office of the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Barbara Slavin is the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council and a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. 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 CSPAN. A career journalist, Slavin previously served as assistant managing editor for world and national security of the Washington Times, senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY, Cairo correspondent for the Economist, as an editor at the New York Times Week in Review. She 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 United States Institute of Peace, where she researched and wrote the report Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts Its Influence in the Middle East.