Mohammad Ataie

View faculty office hours.

Mohammad Ataie is a Lecturer in History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research explores the intersection of revolutions, transnationalism, and Muslim clerical networks, with a focus on the global impact of the 1978-79 revolution in Iran. He is interested in how the revolution built an alternative Islamic solidarity and shifted the revolutionary power from the left to an emerging Islamic resistance.

He is currently completing his book manuscript titled Clerics in Revolt: Exporting the Iranian Revolution and the Transnationalization of the Revolutionary Guards. The book brings together oral history interviews and extensive research in public and private archives in Iran and Lebanon. It investigates how Iranian revolutionaries sought to spread the revolution through clerical activism and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to establish an Islamist international in the 1980s.

Ataie earned his BA in Journalism from Tehran University, his first Masters degree in Sociology from Allameh Tabataba’i University, and a second Masters degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and afterward joined the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

His research and teaching are grounded in his earlier work as a journalist and documentary filmmaker in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. In the classroom he emphasizes media literacy to foster a nuanced, historically informed understanding of Western media coverage of the Middle East. Prior to his doctoral studies, Ataie worked as a diplomatic correspondent at the United Nations. His writing and commentary have appeared in Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Middle East Eye, LobeLog, Middle East Policy, Syria Comment, Al-Jazeera, Al-Hayat, the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan, and several Persian language outlets including IRNA, Sharq Daily, and Diplomacy-e Irani.

“From Revolution to Resistance: Early Connections Between the Palestinian Liberation Movement and Iran,” in Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, The Palestinian National Liberation Movement in the Light of the Global Liberation Movement (forthcoming).

“Exporting the Iranian Revolution: Ecumenical Clerics in Lebanon.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 53, no. 4 (2021): 672–90.

“Brothers, Comrades, and the Quest for the Islamist International: The First Gathering of Liberation Movements in Revolutionary Iran,” in Sune Haugbolle and Rasmus Elling, eds. The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East: Iran, Palestine and Beyond (London: Oneworld Academic, 2024).

“Order and Disorder: The Politics of Seminaries in Iran,” Middle East Briefs, No 157, February 2024.

“Becoming Hezbollah: The Party’s Evolution and Changing Roles, A Conversation with Mohammad Ataie,” Crown Conversations, January 2023

“Continuity Despite Revolution: Iran’s Support for Non-State Actors,” Middle East Briefs, No 141, May 2021.

“Revolutionary Iran's 1979 Endeavor in Lebanon," Middle East Policy, Volume 20, Issue 2, 137–157.

“How Iran’s 1979 Revolution Affected Sunni Islamists in the Middle East,” LSE’s Middle East Centre Blog, April 2021

“Trump’s Maximum Failure and Iran’s Evolving Strategy in the Region,” JIME Center, the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan, April 2020

“Is Iran Abnormal?,” Lobelog, 09 September 2019

“Trump's Sectarian Strategy Will Bring Iran and Hamas Closer,” Middle East Policy, 10 June 2017

“Mohammad Nassif: The Shadow Man of the Syria-Iran Axis,”SyriaComment, 16 July 2015

“The Iran-Syria Alliance: Sectarianism or Realpolitik?,”SyriaComment, 14 June 2015

“Iran is trying to broker a political solution in Syria,” The Guardian, 26 June 2012

“How Does Iran View the West’s Approach to Syria?,”InsideIran.org,  06 July  2012

“The Hamas-Syrian Split, a Dilemma for Iran’s Palestinian Strategy,”SyriaComment, 13 May 2012

“Iran supports Assad, But Not at Any Cost,” Foreign Policy, 9 November 2011