Biography
Amin Tarzi is an adjunct professor of international relations and government at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
Tarzi has published more than 50 academic publications and over a 100 policy pieces in the areas of Middle East and South Asia with focus on Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, hybrid actors and major power competition in the region; evolving competitions and contestations in the Gulf, the Red Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean regions, U.S. national security and interests in the Middle East and its surrounding maritime domains, and proliferation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; historiography and historical narratives. is most recent publications include “The Geopolitics of Iran” in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Geopolitics, ed. Zak Cope (Palgrave McMillian, 2024), “Navigating Complexities: Teaching Israel Studies in the Professional Military Education Context” in Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field, eds. Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2024), and “Three Decades of US Intervention in the Mediterranean Region: Limits of the Counterterrorism Approach to Stabilization,” Confluencés Médierraneé No. 123 (2022). Currently, he is working on a book, co-authored with Robert D. McChesney, on Afghan historiography; a chapter on geopolitics of the Persian Gulf; and an introduction to an analogy of the U.S. Marine Corps involvement in the counterterrorist efforts of post 9/11. He has keynoted, lectured, and presented papers in four languages in 37 countries on subjects, including security, geopolitics, international relations, history and historical narratives, and U.S. foreign policies.
He received his PhD in Middle East Studies from New York University. He has directed Middle East Studies at the Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare at the Marine Corps University in Quantico since its inception in 2007. In addition to GMU, he is Politician in Residence at University of Southern California’s Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in Washington DC and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Program on the Middle East at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His previous experience includes serving as the senior research associate for the Middle East at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, a political advisor to the Saudi Arabian Mission to the United Nations, and an analyst on Iranian affairs at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi.
Areas of Research:
- Geostrategic landscape of the broader Middle East region, the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf, and the Black Sea.
- Threat perceptions in the Middle East
- Nonproliferation
- Hydrocarbon politics
- History and historiography
- U.S. Foreign Policy
- International Relations
- NATO’s relations with its neighboring regions