Mehran Kamrava is Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University, Qatar. He is the author of numerous journal articles and books, including The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War (3rd edition, 2013), Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (2013), The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead (2016), Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf (2018) and Inside the Arab State (2018).