Dr. Arman Mahmoudian is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University and a Research Fellow at the Global and National Security Institute (GNSI) at the University of South Florida. His research examines the intersection of Middle East security, Russian foreign policy, and great power competition, with particular attention to how regional and subnational actors shape the strategic choices of major powers. His forthcoming book, “The Lion, the Bear, and the Eagle: Iran, Russia, and the United States and the Struggle over the Middle East,” is under contract with Cambridge University Press. Before pursuing graduate study, Dr. Mahmoudian worked as a journalist for two of Iran's leading newspapers, Shargh and Etemad, and subsequently earned a master’s degree in international relations from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow. He has appeared as an analyst on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, and Le Monde.
While at GWU, Dr. Mahmoudian’s will be primarily working on his second book, which examines Russia's Middle East policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The central argument is one of structural transformation: unlike the Soviet Union, whose close ties with Arab states routinely strained its relations with Iran and Israel, post-Soviet Russia has been far more successful at maintaining working relationships across the region simultaneously, transforming Syria from a strategic ally into a strategic instrument while preserving ties with Israel, Turkey, Iran, and the Gulf states. To theorize this, Dr. Mahmoudian adapts Lowell Dittmer's strategic-triangle framework into a regionalized model that examines how a great power manages multiple simultaneous relationships with regional actors without becoming entrapped by any single one. The book builds on Dr. Mahmoudian’s published monograph "Russia's Syria Policy: From the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation" (Joint Special Operations University, 2024), which traces the Soviet Syrian relationship from 1947 through Russia's military intervention in 2015 and beyond. Dr. Mahmoudian will be using his time at GW to complete the comparative case chapters, conduct additional research in Washington-area collections, and engage with IMES faculty and the broader DC policy community whose expertise on Russia-Gulf and Russia-Israel dynamics is directly relevant to the project.