Speaker biographies

Mohebat Ahdiyyih currently serves as the senior Iran analyst at the National Open Source Center, where he focuses on Iran and the implications of Shiite doctrine.  After finishing his graduate work in New York City, he traveled and lived in developing countries, working on socio-economic development projects, including the Agency for International Development.  Since 1990, he has specialized in Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs in the U.S. Government.  He has been interviewed by the Washington Post, Voice of America, and other media about Iran.

Mehdi Khalaji is a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, focusing on the role of politics in contemporary Shiite clericalism in Iran and Iraq. A Shiite theologian by training, Mr. Khalaji has also served on the editorial boards of two prominent Iranian periodicals and produced for the U.S. government's Persian news service.  From 1986 to 2000, Mr. Khalaji trained in the seminaries of Qom, the traditional center of Iran's clerical establishment, where he earned a doctorate and researching widely on modern intellectual and philosophical developments in Iran and the wider Islamic and Western worlds. In Qom, and later in Tehran and then Europe, Mr. Khalaji embarked on a career in journalism, first serving on the editorial board of a theological journal and then, after 1995, the intellectual monthly Kyan and the daily Entekhab. Mr. Khalaji moved to Europe to join the BBC Persian Service and eventually became a broadcaster for the Prague-based Radio Farda, the Persian-language service of the U.S. government's Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. At Radio Farda, he produced news, features, and analysis on a range of Middle Eastern, Iranian, and Islamic issues.  Mr. Khalaji is currently completing a doctorate in Shiite theology and exegesis at the Sorbonne in Paris.

A. William Samii is a regional analysis coordinator with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Online and editor of the "RFE/RL Iran Report." He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge. His research articles have appeared in the "Middle East Journal," "Middle East Policy," and the "Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal." He has contributed to several books about the Middle East.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), south Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East.

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