Enduring Hostility: The Making of America's Iran Policy

Join the Sié Center for a conversation with author and expert on geopolitics Dalia Dassa Kaye on U.S.-Iran relations and American foreign policy. Drawing on her new book, Enduring Hostility, Kaye will explore why hostility between the United States and Iran has endured — and what this history reveals about how foreign policy is made. The conversation will connect U.S.-Iran relations to broader questions of Middle East security and American engagement in the region, followed by audience Q&A.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy.

She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill.

She is a frequent public speaker and contributor to leading media outlets, including BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026).

Dalia holds her BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.