Dina Esfandiary

Senior Advisor, Middle East and North Africa

Please submit all media inquiries to [email protected] or call +32 (0) 2 536 00 71

Crisis Group Role

Dina Esfandiary advises Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program on research, analysis, policy prescription and advocacy.

Professional Background

Previously, Dina was a Fellow in the Middle East department of The Century Foundation (TCF), and an International Security Program Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dina also worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Program, the War Studies Department at King’s College London, and in the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Dina has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, The Guardian, the Washington Post, International Affairs, the National Interest, Arms Control Today, and The Washington Quarterly. She holds a Ph.D in the War Studies department at King’s College London and Masters Degrees from King’s College London and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Areas of Expertise

Persian Gulf security and foreign relations
Relations between states and non-proliferation in the Middle East

Select Publications

Triple-Axis: Iran’s Relations with Russia and China, I.B Taurus (2018)
Living on the Edge: Iran and the Practice of Nuclear Hedging, Palgrave Macmillan (2016)

In The News

22 Feb 2023

The UAE has, since 2021, embarked on a policy of diminishing tensions with other countries in the region, and normalizing with Assad is part of that. Al Monitor

Dina Esfandiary

Senior Advisor, Middle East and North Africa

4 Oct 2022

The train has already left the station. No matter what this government [in Iran] gives, it probably won’t be enough to assuage protesters’ grievances at this point. LA Times