Mehran Kamrava is Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He is the author of a number of journal articles and books, including, most recently, The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead (Yale U. P., 2016); Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (Cornell U. P., 2015); The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War, 3rd ed. (University of California Press, 2013); and Iran's Intellectual Revolution (Cambridge U. P., 2008). His edited books include Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East, Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East, and The Political Economy of the Persian Gulf, The Nuclear Question in the Middle East, all available from Oxford University Press.