Dr. Assal Rad is a scholar of Middle East history and a Nonresident Fellow at DAWN. She works on research and writing related to U.S. foreign policy issues, the Middle East, contemporary Iran, and Israel/Palestine. Her writing can be seen in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy and more, and she has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, Al Jazeera, CNN, and NPR. Assal completed a PhD in History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018 and is the author of The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Follow Assal on X/Twitter: @AssalRad