The Iran Deal and U.S. Policy in the Middle East

The Iran nuclear agreement is considered a breakthrough of U.S. diplomacy–but how will the Iran deal and subsequent reshaping of relations between Washington and Tehran affect the landscape in the Middle East? And, importantly, how might an increase in Iran’s influence in the Middle East impact U.S. relations with allies in the region?

On June 9, join the World Affairs Council for an event on the direction of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region after the Iran nuclear agreement. Our discussion will be led by Ambassador William H. Luers, the Director of The Iran Project and an adjunct professor at Columbia University, Dr. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she served as President for 18 years, and Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, with the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. The conversation will be moderated by Nelson Dong, a Partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

*A wine reception will precede the formal program, beginning at 5:30 PM
*The formal program will begin at 6:00 PM

About our speakers:

Ambassador William H. Luers is the Director of The Iran Project and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He was President of the United Nations Association of the USA (1999-2009) and President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (1986-1999). Prior to his move to New York, Luers had a 31 year career in the Foreign Service. He served as US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela, (1978-1982) and held numerous posts in Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and in the Department of State. Luers has been an adjunct at several universities in addition to Columbia. He was also the director’s visitor at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies in 1982-1983. Born in Springfield, Illinois, Luers received his B.A. from Hamilton College and his M.A. from Columbia University following four years in the United States Navy. He is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks Spanish, Russian and Italian.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Carnegie’s president for 18 years. Before her appointment in 1997, her career included posts in both the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism and science policy. She was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1993 to 1997 as director of the Council’s Washington program. In 1993, she also served as deputy to the undersecretary of state for global affairs at the State Department. Prior to that, Mathews was founding vice president and director of research of the World Resources Institute. She also served as director of the Office of Global Issues of the National Security Council, where she worked on issues including nuclear proliferation, conventional arms sales policy, chemical and biological warfare, and human rights. She earned her BS from Radcliffe College and holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is an affiliate faculty member at the Jackson School of International Studies who specializes in the history and politics of the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on the Persian Gulf region. Working across the disciplines of political science, international relations, and international political economy, his research examines the repositioning of the Persian Gulf states in the global order and the emergence of long-term, nontraditional challenges to regional security. Coates Ulrichsen also serves as a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and as an associate fellow at Chatham House in London. He is the author of the books Insecure Gulf: The End of Certainty and the Transition to the Post-Oil Era, The First World War in the Middle East, and Qatar and the Arab Spring and is the editor of The Transformation of the Gulf: Politics, Economics, and the Global Order and The Political Economy of Arab Gulf States. He previously directed a research program on the Gulf States at the London School of Economics.

About our moderator:

A partner in Dorsey's Corporate group, Chair of the National Security Law practice and co-Chair of the Asia-Pacific practice, Nelson Dong has substantial experience in counseling e-commerce, semiconductor, electronics, computer hardware and software, and biomedical and biotechnology companies with special expertise in domestic and international technology licensing, outsourcing and manufacturing in Asia and U.S. export control matters.

He has frequently written about intellectual property law, U.S. export control law, technology related business transactions between the U.S. and Asian or European countries, international strategic alliances, the Exon-Florio law on foreign investments in U.S. technology companies, university-based technology transfer, academic entrepreneurship, academic conflicts of interest and the financing and organization of high technology businesses. He has lectured on such topics throughout the United States and in Austria, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China.

Nelson was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston (1980-82); Deputy Associate Attorney General, Department of Justice (1979-80); and White House Fellow and Special Assistant to U.S. Attorney General Griffin B. Bell, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. (1978-79).