Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a political scientist educated in Germany, France and the Netherlands. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the universities of London (School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) and Münster (Germany). In 2010, Fathollah-Nejad was a visiting lecturer in development and globalization (with a focus on the Middle East) at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of The Iran Conflict and the Obama Administration (in German), published by Potsdam University Press in 2010 (reprinted in 2011 and 2012). He is also a member of the working group on security policy of the civil society initiative for a Conference for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East (CSCME).