Ray Takeyh

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Ray Takeyh on PBS (February 20, 2004).

Ray Takeyh (born 1966) is an Iranian-American Middle East scholar and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a contributing editor of The National Interest.

Takeyh was born and raised in Tehran, receiving his B.A. from Tehran University and his doctorate from St Antony's College,Oxford University in 1997. Prior to joining the Council, he was a fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of California, Berkeley, a fellow in international security studies at Yale University, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a professor at the National War College, and a professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia center at the National Defense University.

Takeyh has extensively written on Iran and on U.S. policy on the Middle East. He has testified several times before various committees of the US Senate and has appeared as an Iran expert on various TV programs, including the PBS Newshour. Takeyh was also an early critic of the view that democracy promotion in the Middle East would serve U.S. security interests.

In his writings and public appearances, Takeyh has tended to be skeptical about the efficacy of current U.S. efforts to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. He has characterized the regime in Tehran as an opportunistic power that is seeking to expand its influence in the region rather than as an apocalyptic threat to the world. He advocates a U.S. policy approach that would alter Iran's foreign policy calculus rather than on trying to pursue regime change. He is usually seen as one of the main voices in the U.S. calling for diplomatic engagement with Iran rather than continued isolation and does not believe, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, that containment of Iran is possible given changed circumstances in the Middle East. Along with Vali Nasr, he wrote a major essay in the January/February 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, laying out these views.

Books

• Ray Takeyh, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006). ISBN 0805079769
• Ray Takeyh, Nikolas Gvosdev, The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Radical Political Islam (Praeger Publishers, 2004). ISBN 0-275-97628-9
• The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The United States, Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953-1957 (Macmillan Press, 2000)

External links

• Ray Takeyh's Council on Foreign Relations web page
• "Understanding the Iran Crisis," Takeyh's U.S. Congressional Testimony
• Senate testimony – September 19, 2006.