Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy | Dalia Dassa Kaye
The Middle East Policy Forum is proud to host Dalia Dassa Kaye for a discussion about the timely and rigorous analysis found in her new book, Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy.
Amidst momentous geopolitical shifts, changing leaderships, and evolving domestic priorities, the United States and Iran have maintained an antagonistic relationship. Standard explanations pin the blame for this enduring hostility on Iran and its leaders’ revolutionary ideology and policies at odds with the United States and the West. While Iran bears significant blame for a deeply adversarial relationship—the country often engages in dangerous and repressive activities—this book demonstrates that “it’s them, not us” accounts cannot alone explain America’s posture toward this complicated but critically important country.
Drawing on original interviews with former government officials, oral histories, memoirs, congressional hearings, archival material, and the author’s own participation in dozens of Iran-related track two meetings, Dalia Dassa Kaye deftly explores how America’s Iran policy is made, the people who make it, and the underlying ideas and perceptions that inform it. Dassa Kaye looks back at U.S. policy toward Iran over the past four decades to help us look ahead, offering wider lessons for understanding American foreign policymaking and providing critical insights at a pivotal time of heightened military tensions in and around the Middle East.
We hope you will join Dalia Dassa Kaye and moderator Sina Azodi for this discussion of a half-century of American policymakers’ shifting perceptions of Iran, and how they have driven U.S.-Iran relations. You can participate in this conversation in-person or virtually. The event is open to the public and the media. If you would like to purchase a copy of Dalia Dassa Kaye’s new book, copies will be available for sale at the event.
Speakers
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Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy. She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She is a frequent public speaker and contributor to leading media outlets, including BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026). Dalia holds her BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Dr. Sina Azodi research interests include international security, nuclear nonproliferation, Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations. He previously worked as a research assistant at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Dr. Azodi is a frequent commentator on both English- and Persian-speaking media, including BBC, Sky News, Al-Jazeera, TRT World, and i24. His analyses have appeared in Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Association, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Foreign Policy, and has been quoted by the New York Times, Washington Post, Spiegel, and Forbes. Dr. Azodi has published the chapter “The Fusion of Politics and Religion in Iran” in the edited book Political Islam in the Gulf Region. He is the author of forthcoming book "Iran and the Bomb: the United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question." He earned his BA and MA in international affairs from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and PhD from University of South Florida.
