Robin Wright, a foreign policy analyst, author and journalist, is a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center. Wright has reported from 144 countries on seven continents for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal and CBS News. Wright won the National Magazine Award for The New Yorker. 

Wright’s book Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World won the 2012 Overseas Press Club award for best book on international affairs. Her eight books also include The Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Policy and The Islamists are Coming: Who They Really Are.

Wright has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale, Duke, Stanford, Dartmouth and the University of California. She won the U.N. Correspondents Association Gold Medal for coverage of foreign affairs, the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative," and the National Press Club Award for best diplomatic reporting. The American Academy of Diplomacy selected her as the journalist of the year.

Publications By Robin

Whither Iran on the Revolution’s Anniversary?

Whither Iran on the Revolution’s Anniversary?

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

By: Robin Wright

Iran marks the anniversary of the Islamic revolution in February amid increasingly existential challenges at home and in relations with the outside world. Four months of nationwide protests — triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 — reflected deepening discontent among Iran’s Gen Z. Young women on streets and at schools abandoned the headscarves required by law, as shouts of “woman, life, freedom” and “death to the dictator” echoed across campus grounds. The protests were a brazen rejection of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and, more broadly, the theocracy’s basic belief that god’s law supersedes human laws. The scope of fury was reflected on October 8, when female students at Al Zahra University in Tehran shouted “Clerics, get lost” during a visit by President Ebrahim Raisi.

Type: Analysis and Commentary

Global Policy

Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran: What’s Ahead for the Biden Administration?

Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran: What’s Ahead for the Biden Administration?

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

By: Robin Wright

Of all the pressing issues in the volatile Middle East—wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, unstable Iraq, imploding Lebanon, and the 10,000 ISIS fighters and other al-Qaida franchises still on the loose—the most pressing for President-elect Joe Biden will be Iran’s controversial nuclear program. He has repeatedly promised to rejoin the nuclear deal, brokered by the world’s six major powers in 2015, which Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018.

Type: Analysis and Commentary

Mediation, Negotiation & Dialogue

Are the U.S. and Iran Really on the Brink of War?

Are the U.S. and Iran Really on the Brink of War?

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

By: Robin Wright

The killing of Qassem Soleimani was the boldest U.S. act in confronting Iran since the 1979 revolution, tantamount to an act of war. Although U.S. officials have characterized the move as “decisive defensive action.” However, if Iran had assassinated the general who heads Central Command (the unit overseeing U.S. military operations in the Middle East and South Asia), Washington would have similarly viewed it as tantamount to an act of war.

Type: Analysis and Commentary

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

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