How Vali Nasr's Life Shaped His Understanding of Iran | From April 2017

Vali Nasr is everywhere in the news these days. The Iranian American scholar has written scores of books and articles about Iran and the Middle East, and even before the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, he was someone policymakers and journalists regularly turned to for insight into Iran.

On a personal note, I have followed his work for years, and since the outbreak of the war, I have found his commentary and analysis particularly useful.

Back in 2017, Vali came on the show to discuss his life and career. I wanted to understand how he developed his worldview and built a career that also included a stint in the Obama administration, where he worked with Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan policy.

In this conversation, Vali opens up about the influence of his father, a prominent academic in Iran, and the trauma of being forced into exile after the 1979 revolution. He explains how those experiences shaped his worldview in ways that, at the time of our conversation, he said he was still coming to grips with.

Vali Nasr is helping to shape our collective understanding of Iran at this critical moment. This conversation goes deep into the personal experiences and intellectual influences behind the views he holds today.

This episode comes from deep in the archives. Global Dispatches is now 13 years old, and the first 200 or so episodes followed a different format from the show today. Back then, I focused less on topical and thematic issues in international affairs and more on the life stories of the people who shape our understanding of the world.

For obvious reasons, this felt like a particularly good moment to republish my interview with Vali Nasr, which originally aired in April 2017.