As governments and citizens around the world have struggled with the novel coronavirus, the information space has turned into a battleground. Authoritarian countries, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread disinformation on the causes of and [...]
Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai joined The Skimm's "Skimm This" to discuss the recent killing of a top Iranian nuclear scientist and how that might impact the incoming Biden administration's plans. [...]
The killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top nuclear scientist, will complicate the incoming Biden administration’s efforts to renew the nuclear deal—and could lead to escalation. Last Friday, Iran announced that an important player in its security app [...]
An Iranian scientist, who U.S. intelligence says is one of Iran's top nuclear officials, has been assassinated. Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro about the news. [...]
After four years of “America First,” President-Elect Biden recently declared: “America is Back.” In other words, U.S. foreign policy is on the verge of change. On this episode, Ariane Tabatabai, the Middle East Fellow at GMF’s Alliance for Securing [...]
On Wednesday night, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe called a news conference to warn Americans that foreign adversaries were actively interfering in the U.S. elections. Ratcliffe noted that two countries, Russia and Iran, have launc [...]
Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai moderated a GMF Face Off debate, where participants answered the question, "Is the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign against Iran working?" In a twist, participants Richard Nephew and Mark Dubowitz [...]
Donald Trump and Joe Biden are putting forward very different ideas about U.S. policy toward Iran, which arguably makes the results of their contest very consequential for Tehran—though some in the Islamic Republic say otherwise. That raises the que [...]
Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai joined the New Statesman's "World Review" podcast to discuss Iran's role in its region and the world, how diplomacy with the United States is likely to proceed, and the violence breaking out in Nagorno-Karabakh. R [...]
This policy paper was co-authored with Edgar P. Tam, visiting senior fellow at the Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Please click the link at the right to view the full paper. President Donald Trump’s views on Iran hav [...]
ASD Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai gives readers a short introduction to her recently released report Iran's Authoritarian Playbook: The Tactics, Doctrine, and Objectives behind Iran’s Influence Operations. In one of the first comprehensive di [...]
Introduction According to a 2013 indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, hackers backed by a foreign power gained access to the controls of the Bowman Avenue Dam, a small dam in the New York City suburb of Rye, New York. Cyberattacks on inf [...]
Summary As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, authoritarian actors have engaged in robust information-manipulation campaigns. China—where the virus originated and spread due to the government’s initial cover up and mismanagement [...]
Restart, a fringe Iranian dissident group, shows how conspiracy spreads—and what that means for U.S. politics, Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatai writes in Foreign Policy. QAnon entered the mainstream U.S. political lingo in 2017, when its followers [...]
Beleaguered by regional tensions, the coronavirus pandemic, and economic woes, Tehran could use anti-Israel sentiment to restore its reputation, ASD Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai and Eurasia Group Analyst Henry Rome argue in Foreign Policy. [...]
Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai spoke to Newsy about how Iran is using its social media presence to spread messages about the U.S.' handling of the coronavirus pandemic and racial justice protests. For years, Iran has been ramping up its online [...]
Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai argues in Foreign Affairs that the IRGC is using traditional and social media to assert its leadership and project itself as the guardian of public health and the champion of the fight against the invisible enemy [...]
Iran is ramping up its fight against the United States. "Despite the crippling toll of the pandemic," Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai and Colin P. Clarke write in Vox, "Tehran has continued to work tirelessly to eject the last remaining US force [...]
At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, Iranian officials were playing it down. They were dealing in conspiracy theories and disinformation and blamed the United States for spreading the virus, Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai explained on [...]
The spread of the coronavirus has exacerbated tensions within the governmental system and between the system and the population, Middle East Fellow Ariane Tabatabai said on CSIS's podcast "Babel." Iranian state-backed media has been pushing the narr [...]