2023 Undergraduate Fellow Spotlight: Jonathan Rosenberg
Jonathan Rosenberg is a rising junior at Princeton University. He is majoring in Near Eastern Studies and plans to complete minors in German, as well as in the History and Practice of Diplomacy. Academically, he is most interested in the politics of modern Iran and American foreign policy towards the Middle East. In addition to German, Jonathan has also been learning Persian at college. He hopes to further develop his skills in Persian throughout the rest of university and beyond. In the past year, he has had the opportunity to take courses centered around foreign policy and grand strategy, which further sparked his interest in the field and led him to the CNS Fellowship. Jonathan has had previous experience working on and researching American relations with Iran through the nonprofit sector. In his free time, Jonathan loves to fish, cook, and garden.
Research Presentation: The Domestic Aspect of Foreign Affairs
Though many scholars have explored the history of Iran’s nuclear diplomacy, and others have conducted research on Iran’s domestic politics, these two fields have rarely been combined in the scholarly literature. An important question has by-and-large remained unanswered: how have Iran’s elected officials (i.e., its presidents and members of Parliament) shaped the country’s nuclear negotiations? Within the American media, Iranian elections are either decried as insignificant due to Khamenei’s strong authority, or they are regarded as key to shaping Iran’s new nuclear direction. I will explore which attitude is closer to the truth, and upon reaching my conclusion, I will extrapolate my findings to discuss how the United States should react to future Iranian elections to maximize beneficial outcomes from nuclear negotiations with Iran.