Eric Lob

Eric Lob is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University. His research focuses on the intersection of development and politics in the Middle East. It specifically explores how state and non-state actors in the region instrumentalize development as a soft power mechanism to further their political interests both domestically and internationally. He is the author of the book Iran’s Reconstruction Jihad: Rural Development and Regime Consolidation after 1979 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Based on interviews and archival research in Iran, the book examines how the Islamic Republic mobilized activists and promoted development in the countryside to consolidate power against its internal and external opponents. The project is based on Lob’s 2013 dissertation at Princeton University that won the Foundation for Iranian Studies annual award for best dissertation and honorable mention for the Association for Iranian Studies biannual Mashayekhi Dissertation Award. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Iranian Studies, Middle East Critique, The Middle East Journal, Third World Quarterly, and others. He has provided commentary on Iran and the Middle East to some of the leading domestic and international media outlets, including The Washington Post, The National Interest, Jadaliyya, Al Jazeera, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS. Lob is a Board of Trustees member of the American Institute of Iranian Studies (AIIrS) and a member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Before joining the faculty at Florida International University, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Between 2009 and 2011, Lob conducted fieldwork and studied Persian in Iran. He also studied Arabic at Georgetown and Damascus Universities between 2005 and 2007. In 2005, he earned an MA in Middle East and Strategic Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Languages:
English, Persian/Farsi, Arabic, French 

Regions of Expertise:
Iran, Middle East, Africa

Issues of Expertise:
Iran-Middle East, Iran-Africa, Development, Political Economy, Conflict & Security, State-Society Relations, Foreign Policy

Selected Publications:

• “Institutional Continuities and Changes in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The Case of Construction Jihad,” The Iran 1400 Project, November 4, 2021.

• “Rural deprivation and regime durability in Iran,” Middle East Institute, November 1, 2021.

• “Iranian Reconstruction, Development, and Aid in Syria,” The Middle East Journal 75.2 (2021): 223-42.

• Iran’s Reconstruction Jihad: Rural Development and Regime Consolidation after 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

• “Mobilizing Construction Jihad in Revolutionary Iran,” Maydan, February 4, 2020.

• “Roundtable: Backdrop & Reverberations of Soleimani’s Assassination (Part 1: Iran),” Jadaliyya, January 15, 2020 (with Maryam Alemzadeh and Arshin Adib-Moghaddam).

• “Iran and Hizbullah’s Development Organization in Lebanon: The Case of Jihād al-Bināʾ,” Die Welt des Islams 59.3-4 (2019): 411-42. 

• “The Politics of Development and Security in Iran’s Border Provinces,” The Middle East Journal 73.2 (2019): 263-84 (with Nader Habibi). 

• “Construction Jihad: State-Building and Development in Iran and Lebanon’s Shiʿi Territories,” Third World Quarterly 39.11 (2018): 2103-25.

• “War, Mobilization, and Development in the Islamic Republic of Iran: From the Construction Jihad to the Trench Builders Association (1979-2013),” in Ángel Alcalde and Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas (eds.), War Veterans and the World after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory (London: Routledge 2018), 150-66.

• “Regime Resilience, Social Welfare, and Economic Development in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Bustan 9.2 (2018): 111-31.

• “Development, Mobilization and War: The Iranian Construction Jihad, Construction Mobilization and Trench Builders Association,” Middle East Critique 26.1 (2017): 25-44.

• “There’s a battle in Iran over the IRGC’s business empire,” The Washington Post, January 5, 2017 (with Nader Habibi).

• “Researching Hizbullah in Lebanon,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49.3 (2017): 521-25.

• “The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Foreign Policy and Construction Jihad’s Developmental Activities in Sub-Saharan Africa,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48.2 (2016): 313-38.

• “Realists Should Expect America and Turkey to Stick Together,” The National Interest, August 24, 2016.

• “The Evolution of Scholarship on Middle East Authoritarianism: Essentialism, Democratization, and Resilience,” Iranian Studies 48.3 (2015): 489-99.

• “What Iran will really do with its sanctions relief windfall,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2015.

• “Understanding Iran’s Supreme Leader on the Nuclear Deal,” The Washington Post, April 14, 2015 (with Amir Hossein Mahdavi).

• “Is Hezbollah Confronting a Crisis of Popular Legitimacy?” Crown Center Middle East Brief 78 (March 2014).