Iran After Ahmadinejad

Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country.

In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, exploring his affiliations and policies at home and internationally.

Going forward, we will examine how Rouhani will tackle some of the biggest problems facing the country: from the nuclear issue to the economic crisis, and domestic power struggles to human rights.

Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.

The panel:

Azadeh Moaveni is a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.

Mark Fitzpatrick is the director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes. Prior to joining IISS he had a 26-year career in the US Department of State, where in his final posting he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-proliferation.

Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView, which specialises in analysis of Iran. A specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran, he has written and edited eleven books, more than 40 major articles, as well as producing a radio documentary and co-directing the 2007 film Laban!. Formerly a journalist in the US, he wrote for newspapers including the Guardian and The Independent and was an essayist for The New Statesman before founding EA WorldView.

This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.