Upcoming Webinar: A History of Foreign Interventions in Iran

Join ASMEA on April 13, 2026 at 12:00 pm (ET) for the webinar "A History of Foreign Interventions in Iran" led by Dr. D Gershon Lewental, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University.

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This lecture traces a longue durée history of foreign interventions in Iran, from the conquests of Alexander the Great in Antiquity through the Arab-Islamic, Turkic, Mongol, and Timurid invasions of the mediæval period, to the intensification of imperial competition, conflict, and conquest in the early modern and modern periods—from Portuguese incursions to Ottoman, Russian, and British invasions, and finally American involvement in the Twentieth Century. It examines not only the recurrent vulnerability of Iran, owing to its strategic geography, to external intervention, but also the striking continuity of Iranian cultural and political resilience: the capacity to absorb foreign occupiers, reconstitute authority, and reassert identity. This deeper historical pattern suggests that foreign intervention in Iran has often generated unintended consequences, strengthening rather than weakening the structures it sought to undermine.

D Gershon Lewental is a cultural historian of the Middle East, focusing on how societies use religion, memory, and conflict to define and maintain their identities. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and has also taught at the University of Oklahoma (since 2012) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (since 2023). Since 2015, he has served as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies. He earned his bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and his doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Brandeis University. His dissertation, on the changing perceptions of the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran through time, received the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation Award and the Brandeis University Glatzer Dissertation Prize.

His fields of specialization include Iranian and Persianate history, early Islamic historiography, the history of the Bahaʾi community in Israel, modern Central Asian identities, and Middle East minorities.