Trita Parsi

Dr. Trita Parsi is Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, where he advances a vision of U.S. foreign policy grounded in restraint and diplomacy. An influential Washington policy thinker, he has been named one of the capital’s 25 most influential voices on foreign policy by Washingtonian magazine each year since 2021.

A recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, Parsi is the author of four widely praised books on U.S. policy in the Middle East, including Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale, 2017). His work combines rigorous scholarship with direct experience in international institutions, including service at Sweden’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where he handled Security Council matters on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Born in Iran and raised in Sweden, Parsi earned a Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS, studying under Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He previously co-founded and led the National Iranian American Council and has taught at Georgetown, NYU, and Johns Hopkins.

Parsi’s insights appear regularly in The Washington Post, New York Times, and Financial Times, and he is a frequent guest on CNN, BBC, NPR, and Al Jazeera.