Suzanne Maloney -- Dialogue: Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference 2011 (Idaho Public Television)

Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference 2011

Suzanne Maloney

When a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire in December, 2010 to protest treatment by a police officer, he set off an unlikely chain of uprisings throughout the region, now dubbed as the "Arab Spring." Both Tunisia and Egypt's revolutions resulted in a change of government, and later in 2011, Libya's government also fell to rebels.

Suzanne Maloney, a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, talks with Marcia Franklin about the reasons why the uprisings are occurring, and their potential effects on the United States. The two also discuss U.S.-Iranian relations. Maloney is an expert on Iran.

Before she took her current position, Maloney worked as the Middle East advisor for ExxonMobil Corporation, was a member of the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and directed the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on US Policy toward Iran.

She is the author of Iran's Long Reach: Iran as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World.