Sanam Vakil

Sanam Vakil is Director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House in London. A British-Iranian political scientist, she has published extensively on Iranian domestic politics, Gulf security, and the JCPOA nuclear negotiations. She appears regularly on BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera and briefs parliamentary committees. Her academic formation includes doctoral work at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins.

Vakil has been the most prominent independent analytical voice throughout the 2026 Iran conflict. She warned early that the Supreme Leader's seat could remain effectively empty despite official IRIB claims , and her early analysis that Pezeshkian's contradictory orders reflected a fractured command chain became consensus within days. She has consistently argued that the IRGC, not the civilian government, controls Iran's wartime decision-making. More recently she tracked the emergence of what Lowdown identified as Mojtaba Khamenei's first named directives via IRIB, interpreting them as confirmation that the succession has moved from informal control to explicit institutional assertion.

Her institutional position at Chatham House gives her analysis additional weight: the think tank's published challenge to the UK's defensive/offensive base-access distinction draws on the same framework. Vakil's work on the JCPOA and Iran-GCC relations informs her reading of Iran's negotiating posture, including the significance of Pakistan's nuclear-monitoring concession in April 2026 and the Antalya quartet's formation in May. She tracks the UN Security Council dimension as well, including the Barakah drone strike emergency session in May 2026.