Sanam Vakil

Director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, Vakil is a British-Iranian political scientist who 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.

Sanam Vakil has been the most prominent independent analytical voice throughout the 2026 Iran conflict, from the initial succession crisis through the Islamabad talks collapse in April and the emergence of the Antalya quartet. She warned early that the Supreme Leader's seat could remain empty despite official claims , and her analysis that Pezeshkian's contradictory orders reflected a fractured command chain proved prescient . She has consistently argued that the IRGC, not the civilian government, controls Iran's wartime decision-making.

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 drew on the same analytical framework. Vakil's work on the JCPOA and Iran-GCC relations informs her current reading of Iran's negotiating posture, including the significance of the Pakistani-brokered nuclear monitoring concession in April 2026.