VALI NASR

(Vali Reza Nasr)


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Vali Nasr

Democracy is good, provided the government can function.
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Vali Nasr

I think President Barack Obama came to office with quite fundamental understandings in his mind about what's possible and what's not possible in the Middle East. The first, I would say, revolutionary breakthrough that he introduced is that the Middle East doesn't matter to American geostrategy as much as we think.
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Vali Nasr

Turf battles area a staple of every administration
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Vali Nasr

What you have in Iraq is not just a society coming apart like Yugoslavia or Congo. What is at stake is not just Iraq's stability but the balance of power in the region.
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Vali Nasr

My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience.
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Vali Nasr

The Bush Administration thought of politics as the relationship between individuals and the state and so it failed to recognize that the people of the Middle East see politics as the balance of power between communities.
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Vali Nasr

President Barack Obama started by accepting the military's counterinsurgency, but came out of Afghanistan having decided that counterinsurgency actually doesn't work.
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Vali Nasr

A timely and incisive look into the history, politics, and future of the Muslim Brotherhood by the foremost expert on Islamism in Egypt. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham has constructed a detailed account of how the Brotherhood confronts the challenges before it, and why and when it embraces change. Everyone concerned with the future of Egypt should read this book.
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Vali Nasr

The Middle East that will emerge from the crucible of the Iraq war may not be more democratic, but it will definitely be more Shiite.
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The Shiites are a faction of Islam that has contested with the majority faction, the Sunnis, for theological and cultural dominance of Islam and the Middle East. The Shiites were the majority in Iraq but under Saddam were dominated by the Sunni. Iran is a Shiite country but the Arab states other than Iraq have Sunni majorities and dominance.

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Vali Nasr
© Vali Nasr
Vali Nasr
  • Born: December 20, 1960
  • Nationality: Iranian, American
  • Profession:
Biography

Vali Reza Nasr is an Iranian-American academic and author specializing in the Middle East and the Islamic world. He is Majid Khaddouri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. He served as the eighth dean of the school from 2012 to 2019. Nasr is also a Non-Resident Fellow in South Asia at Atlantic Council and is described by The Economist as "a leading world authority on Shia Islam".