Fall 2025 Zahedi Fellow: Diba Mirzaei

Diba Mirzaei joins the Stanford Iranian Studies Program and the Hoover Institution Library and Archives as the Fall 2025 Zahedi Family Fellow. 

Diba Mirzaei is a researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg. Her dissertation, Iran’s Foreign Policy toward Saudi Arabia from 1968–1979: Fragile Autonomy under the Nixon Doctrine (submitted in June 2025), explores how Iran’s policy toward Saudi Arabia intersected with interpretations of the Shah’s autonomy. It examines whether the cooperation envisioned under the Nixon Doctrine materialized in practice and asks whether it was primarily shaped by American policy prescriptions or by the Shah’s own regional ambitions. The central question is the extent to which Iran exercised foreign policy autonomy vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia under the Nixon Doctrine.

Mirzaei’s research interests include Iranian foreign policy and feminist approaches to international relations. She publishes and presents regularly on these topics and recently taught a university-level course on Iranian foreign policy since the 1970s at the University of Hamburg. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked at the German Federal Foreign Office in the field of humanitarian assistance.

During her fellowship, Mirzaei plans to continue her research on Iran–Saudi relations, drawing in particular on the Zahedi Papers to reconstruct the nuances of Iranian foreign policy decision-making and its regional implications. Her project seeks to determine whether the Shah pursued a concrete strategy for the Persian Gulf, how he positioned himself in relation to other states in the region, which Arab states he considered competitors, how he perceived Saudi Arabia, and whether he regarded it as a threat. She also aims to analyze the evolution of his relationship with the United States over time. With this work, Mirzaei hopes to challenge existing narratives and provide fresh insights into Iran–Saudi relations. In addition, she intends to develop a book proposal based on her PhD thesis.

The Zahedi Family Fellowship is a 12-week residential fellowship with the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Hoover Library and Archives at Stanford focused on the Ardeshir Zahedi Archives. Diba will give a public lecture on her research at the end of her residency (details to come).