GlobIS Review, Issue 6

How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare

How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez

Mahmood Monshipouri

Mahmood Monshipouri reviews How Sanctions Work, in which Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez combine oral histories, media analysis, and economic data to trace the effects of sanctions on Iran since 1979. The book shows that sanctions have strengthened the Islamic Republic while impoverishing its population, and the reviewer argues that the recent attacks on Iran make its findings all the more relevant.

Rethinking Iran’s Grand Strategy with Vali Nasr

Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History, Vali Nasr

Esmaeil Izadi

Esmaeil Izadi reviews Vali Nasr’s Iran’s Grand Strategy, which reads a century of Iranian foreign policy as a coherent logic of state survival rather than ideology or irrationality. Reframing Nasr’s argument through the lens of the modern nation-state, the review asks whether a durable grand strategy can emerge without reconciling state survival with national legitimacy and inclusive development.

When Categories Cease to Explain: Political Science and the Middle East after the Arab Uprisings

The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, and Sean Yom (eds.)

Farideh Shahriari

Farideh Shahriari reviews The Political Science of the Middle East, edited by Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, and Sean Yom, which surveys how scholarship after the Arab uprisings rethought authoritarianism, protest, sectarianism, migration, and local politics. She values it as a disciplinary stocktaking, but notes that it offers readers in Iranian studies comparative questions rather than a sustained treatment of Iran.

Global Middle East

Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century, Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera (eds.)

Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera

An excerpt from the introduction to Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera. Against the “exceptionalist” image of a region trapped by its history, culture, and religion, the editors show how the Middle East has long been shaped by, and has shaped, global flows of ideas, people, arts, goods, and beliefs.

War as the Production of Space

Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, Laleh Khalili

Aidin Torkameh

Aidin Torkameh reviews Laleh Khalili’s Sinews of War and Trade, a history of how shipping routes, ports, and maritime infrastructure made the Arabian Peninsula central to global capitalism. Reading the book as a study of the production of space, he finds it especially timely now that the war has put the Strait of Hormuz back in the headlines.

The Axis of Resistance and the New Middle East

The Axis of Resistance: Iran, Israel, and the Struggle for the Middle East, Hamidreza Azizi

Marzieh Kouhi Esfahani

Marzieh Kouhi Esfahani reviews Hamidreza Azizi’s The Axis of Resistance, a historical analysis of the origins, evolution, and mission of the network Iran built as a central pillar of its forward-defense strategy. Azizi argues that the weakening of the Axis since the Gaza war has left it unable to provide the deterrence it was meant to offer Iran.

Iran’s National Security on the Border of Thought and Might: Re-reading Political Rivalries in the Contemporary Middle East

Political Tendencies in the Middle East and Iran’s National Security, Hamid Ahmadi

Samar Saremi

Samar Saremi reviews Hamid Ahmadi’s Political Tendencies in the Middle East and Iran’s National Security, which critically examines how the Islamic Republic’s regional policies relate to the region’s intellectual-political currents and to threats against Iran’s national security. She argues that while the book places Iranian nationhood at the heart of national security, it leaves the link between democracy and security unresolved.

Dominant Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East: A Critical Assessment

Identity and Foreign Policy in Iran and the Middle East, Rahman Ghahramanpour

Nima Shojaei

Nima Shojaei reviews Rahman Ghahramanpour’s Identity and Foreign Policy in Iran and the Middle East, which uses the concept of “dominant identity” and a comparative historical method to explain the foreign policies of Iran, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt. He values its focus on identity over purely material explanations, but argues that its policy-oriented conclusion leaves the book’s own insights, especially on Iran, underexplored.

An Impossible Love for the Persian Cat in Lebanon

Beyrut, Ebrahim Akbari Dizgah

Shima Vezvaei

Shima Vezvaei reviews Beyrut, Ebrahim Akbari Dizgah’s award-winning blend of novel and travelogue about a seminary-educated writer’s journey to Lebanon to document the life of Imam Musa al-Sadr. Through the narrator’s view of women, Shi’a Islam, and Iran, she reads the book as a window onto how a young generation close to the Islamic Republic’s establishment imagines Lebanon.