17 Facts About Abbas Milani

Abbas Malekzadeh Milani is an Iranian-American historian, educator, and author.

Abbas Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Abbas Milani was born in Iran to a prosperous family and was sent to California when he was sixteen, graduating from Oakland Technical High School in 1966 after only one year of studies.

Abbas Milani lectured on Marxist themes veiled in metaphor but was jailed for two years as a political prisoner for "activities against the government".

Abbas Milani was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978.

Abbas Milani was an assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Tehran and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1986, but after the Iranian Revolution he was not allowed to publish or teach.

Abbas Milani served as a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at University of California, Berkeley.

Abbas Milani became a Hoover Institution research fellow in 2001 and left Notre Dame de Namur for Stanford University in 2002.

Abbas Milani is currently the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University.

Abbas Milani's profile gained widespread international recognition following the publication of The Shah in 2011, a work that received universal acclaim.

Since 2011, Abbas Milani shifted the focus of his research to the era of Reza Shah.

Abbas Milani was jailed at Evin Prison, and became disillusioned with revolutionary politics.

In July 2009, Abbas Milani appeared in a United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing amidst 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, and called for imposing "multilateral and crippling sanctions" on Iranians.

Abbas Milani advised the congressmen not to support the military invasion of Iran because it would not politically contribute to the American goal of regime change.

Shortly afterward, Iranian prosecutors in the post-election trials built a case against the defendants by connecting them to Abbas Milani, mentioning him by name in the official indictment.

Hamid Dabashi criticized Abbas Milani for undermining the Green Movement of Iran by supporting foreign intervention instead of grassroots democracy in Iran.

Abbas Milani separated from his first wife, Fereshteh Davaran, in 1988.