Ariane Tabatabai

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ariane Tabatabai

• Ariane Tabatabai’s father, Javad Tabatabai, was a well-known political philosopher in Iran.

• Javad Tabatabai had served as an officer in the Iranian military’s propaganda corps and studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he developed a theory of Iranian supremacy.

• Ariane Tabatabai followed her father as he worked as a visiting scholar in Germany, France, and the U.S.

• After graduating from Stony Brook University, U.S., in 2008, she returned to Iran, where her father had worked in the government.

  

• Ariane Tabatabai served as a Stanton nuclear security fellow and an associate at Harvard Kennedy School from 2013 to 2014.

• In 2014, she began working as an associate in the Belfer Center’s International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom. She served in the position till 2015.

• In 2015, Ariane Tabatabai worked as a researcher and an associate political scientist for the RAND Corporation, a non-profit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm in Southern California.

• After that, she started working as a curriculum director and visiting associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

• Ariane Tabatabai has worked as an international civilian consultant for NATO.

• From 2017 to 2018, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School.

• In 2020, Ariane Tabatabai published a book titled ‘No Conquest, No Defeat: Iran’s National Security Strategy.’

  

• Before the 2020 US presidential election, she wrote an article for Foreign Policy magazine, saying Iran’s economy was weak and its leaders would have to negotiate.

• Ariane Tabatabai also advised the next U.S. president to avoid returning to the nuclear agreement with Iran and to demand more.

• In 2021, after the Joe Biden administration began, Robert Malley was chosen to lead U.S. nuclear talks with Iran, and Ariane Tabatabai joined his team.

• She left the team after a few months because she thought that the U.S. would lift too many sanctions, making the new agreement too weak.

  

• Ariane Tabatabai co-authored the book ‘Triple-Axis: Iran’s Relations with Russia and China’ in 2021.

  

• After that, she became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S. government.

• In September 2023, reports from Semafor and Iran International revealed a large collection of Iranian government emails that allegedly linked Tabatabai to the Iran Experts Initiative. Soon, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials started this initiative to improve Tehran’s image and view on global security.

• Following these reports, Senator Marsha Blackburn requested a review of Ariane Tabatabai’s security clearance.

• In October 2023, after a review, she kept her top-secret security clearance.

• This was confirmed by Rheanne Wirkkala, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, in a letter to Senator Joni Ernst on 13 October 2023.

• Two weeks later, the Pentagon released a statement saying that Ariane Tabatabai was fully and properly examined for her position in the Department of Defense.

• She then started working as a Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense.

  

• Ariane Tabatabai has worked as a senior associate in the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

• Her writings have been featured in many scholarly journals such as International Security and The Journal of Strategic Studies, as well as in policy-related publications such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Haaretz, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.

• Ariane Tabatabai frequently contributes to many media houses on nuclear issues, Iranian foreign and security policies, and Middle East regional security.

• She often provides updates in English, French, and Persian on various media platforms such as NPR, BBC, BBC Persian, Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, France Culture, and France24.

• Ariane Tabatabai has been a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and a Truman National Security Fellow.

• She has served as a Non-Resident Scholar with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey, United States.

• Ariane Tabatabai has worked as a Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the United States.

• She has served as an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

• Ariane Tabatabai is fluent in French and Persian.

• Many noted television news channel often invites her as a guest speaker to their live shows and interviews.

  

• In October 2024, some media reports claimed that Ariane Tabatabai was allegedly linked to the leak of classified documents summarising Israel’s plan to attack Iran. The report, by Sky News Arabia, cited an unnamed Pentagon official as the source of the allegation.