Tara Kangarlou is an Iranian-American global affairs journalist who has produced, written and reported for NBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera America. She is the founder of the NGO Art of Hope, an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, and the author of The Heartbeat of Iran. If there’s one truth I’ve come to hold sacred through…
An online panel discussion with Professor Ali Ansari, Dr Banafsheh Keynoush and Holly Dagres.
Guest moderated by Sir Richard Dalton
23 October 2025 14.00 BST
Amin Saikal is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies President Donald Trump’s gunboat diplomacy has put Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a…
Richard Walker is Professor of Tectonics at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford. He leads the Active Tectonics and Earthquakes Research Group, and is the Oxford lead of the UK Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics. The desert town of Tabas-e-Golshan, eastern Iran, offers welcome respite from the heat…
Professor Simon Mabon is Director of the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation (SEPAD) project at Lancaster University’s Richardson Institute and Chair in International Politics On 12 January, US and UK militaries struck targets across Yemen in an effort to prevent Houthi attacks against ships passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis, a violently intolerant Islamist group…
Michael Noel-Clarke, who studied as an undergraduate in Esfahan and later served in the British Embassy in Tehran (1970-74), has recently translated the memoires of Prince Arfa, a prominent member of the Persian establishment at the end of the 19th century. The book has been published by Gingko Library as Memories of a Bygone Age: Qajar Persia and Imperial Russia…
The summer issue of the Asian Affairs Journal is now available online – click here for the contents page. Some articles are free to view by all visitors (as indicated); others are only available for free to RSAA memers/JSTOR/Taylor & Francis/Academic subscribers. Highlights include “Yemen and the Huthis: Genesis of the 2015 Crisis” – an…
Manuel Martorell is a Spanish journalist and one of the founders of the national daily El Mundo, where he held the posts of Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor. He has been covering the Kurds since 1983 and has published three books on the subject and produced a number of television documentaries. 8 February 2015. This will…
RSAA members Max Lovell-Hoare and Sophie Ibbotson both recently were privileged to be part of a first in the history of travel – they were guides on the first private train to be permitted to cross from Iran to Europe. Here, Max Lovell-Hoare reflects on an unexpected gem he discovered in Iran during the journey….
Karlos Zurutuza is a freelance reporter who contributes to a number of media channels including Al-Jazeera. Here, he writes on the complexities of covering one of the most off-the-radar conflicts worldwide: Balochistan. It had been four years since I last met Mr Purdely. The chain of uprisings in northern Africa and the Middle East that…
