At the time of this episode’s release, former Chief Justice of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, will have been inaugurated as Iran’s new president. His election in June was highly controversial; it saw record low voter turnout, with less than half of all registered voters showing up at the polls. Many have claimed that this was a sham election, as opposing candidates were banned from the race, and Raisi’s own views support those of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khameni. With this change from the more moderate former president to the hardline views of Raisi, how will Iranian politics shift in the coming years? What will be the effects on US-Iranian relations and the hopes of a revived nuclear deal? In this episode of the Hopkins Podcast on Foreign Affairs, we are joined by Xiyue (she-wei) Wang to discuss these questions and more.
: Wang Xiyue is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his research focuses on the history and regional affairs of the Middle East (with an emphasis on Iran). Mr. Wang came to national prominence through his analyses on Iran that combine scholarly insights with in-country experience: in August 2016, on an academic visit to Iran as a Princeton graduate student, he was detained by Iranian authorities, falsely charged with espionage, and imprisoned in Tehran. Mr. Wang was released in a prisoner swap between the US and Iran in December 2019. Since his release, Mr. Wang has written about his experience in Iran in Foreign Affairs, and his writings on US-Iranian relations and Sino-Iranian relations have been widely published.
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Hopkins Podcast on Foreign Affairs 