On June 24, 2026, the editor-in-chief of the Foreign Policy magazine, Ravi Agrawal, hosted Ali Vaez on the magazine’s flagship podcast, Foreign Policy Live. Vaez is the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group and a frequent contributor to the magazine. He advised the Biden administration’s envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, who previously served as the CEO of the International Crisis Group, but left government after the FBI opened an investigation into him for allegedly sharing classified information with Iran.
Foreign Policy’s misstep here isn’t sharing Vaez’s perspective. Rather, it is doing so while concealing information that would help its audience judge Vaez’s credibility and independence, or lack thereof.
In 2023, Semafor and Iran International broke a story about “Iran Experts Initiative,” a project by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Iran launched this program in 2013 and “planned to liaise over the next 18 months to aggressively promote the merits of a nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington, which was finalized in July 2015.” The core of the group was the Iranian diaspora in the United States and Europe. One of its members was Vaez.
Hacked emails reveal the extent of Vaez’s involvement and loyalty to the Islamic Republic. In one email to then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif, he wrote:
We know it to be our national duty to clearly reflect the views of the Islamic Republic with care and according to officially stated positions and the explanations given in conversations with your colleagues.
…
As an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty, I have not hesitated to help you in any way; from proposing to Your Excellency a public campaign against the notion of [nuclear] breakout, to assisting your team in preparing reports on practical needs of Iran.
The International Crisis Group defended Vaez:
One of the published emails, sent by Ali to Iran’s then-foreign minister, has been starkly misrepresented. Only one sentence of the note was translated from the original Farsi into English in the reporting. Taken as a whole, the email reads as a clear assertion of impartiality and neutrality, not a statement of sympathy toward the Iranian position.
The full Persian text does not imply neutrality.
Vaez’s loyalty clearly lies with the Islamic Republic, according to his private words. Foreign Policy’s stated mission is “to explain Washington to the world and the world to Americans.” Explaining the world to Americans necessarily requires giving a platform to foreign governments’ mouthpieces, including adversarial ones. But by omitting Vaez’s background, Foreign Policy is instead misleading Americans about the world.
Agrawal simply introduced Vaez as “one of the most astute commentators of the [Iran] war” and “a sharp analyst.” The episode’s description simply says that he has been involved in “unofficial dialogues with the United States and Iran,” an egregious misrepresentation.
Vaez’s “analysis” leads to conclusions favorable to Iran. He gives credence to Iran’s claim to its $7 billion assets in Qatar. The assets were released in 2023 as part of a deal to free American citizens taken hostage by Iran, only to be refrozen after the October 7 attacks, in which yet more Americans were taken hostage by the Iranian proxy Hamas. But Vaez says that Iran had a right to access the funds since the agreement to release them had nothing to do with Iran’s regional conduct. He added that releasing these funds under the current agreement meant that “it is the second time the Iranians are paying for that money to get access to it,” as if Iran had no choice but to take hostages and sponsor massacre, rape, and enslavement of Israelis.
Vaez also claims that Iran is in such a dire economic state that the financial boost it receives from the agreement will have to go into economic reconstruction. This is the exact argument he and others made about the 2015 nuclear agreement, which proved to be wrong. Even prior to the U.S. and Israeli strikes, Iran’s economic standing was far worse than in 2015. There is also no indication that a regime, which killed up to 40,000 of its own citizens over one weekend and created an unprecedented water crisis in service of its military ambitions, is sensitive to its citizens’ economic needs.
As an alternative policy, Vaez suggests reintegrating Iran into the region’s economy and removing sanctions. “Iran has had very serious differences with Turkey. … They’ve been historic rivals [sic]. … The Iranians never attacked Turkey because there’s so much economic interdependence.”
The problem with this argument is multifaceted. First, this does not solve the problem of Iran’s subversion of its neighbors’ politics and security through proxy terror groups in Iraq and Lebanon, nor Iran’s support for an ethnic cleansing campaign in Syria. Iran had economic relations with all these countries, too.
Second, it also fails to address the problem of Iran’s constant threats to and attacks on Israel, the United States’ primary partner in the region.
Vaez’s advice is not particularly sound for Arab states, either. Iran’s second-largest trading partner after China is the United Arab Emirates. Outside of Israel, no other state has been targeted as ferociously by the Iranian war machine as the United Arab Emirates.
Given Vaez’s loyalty to the Islamic Republic, it is understandable that he omitted this point. But in failing to challenge him on these points, Agrawal demonstrated shockingly poor journalism.
Foreign Policy was founded by the great political scientist Samuel Huntington and veteran diplomat Warren Manshel. Both were patriotic Americans who wished to use their magazine to advance American interests and inform American policymakers and citizens. American elites and voters still take it seriously, despite its turn away from American interests. Its founders would be turning in their graves.