Ray Takeyh

Ray Takeyh is an Iranian-American Middle East scholar, former United States Department of State official, and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Early life.
Ray Takeyh was born to an Assyrian family in Tehran, Iran in 1966. His family has origins in the village of Takeyh-Ardishai in Urmia. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Career.
Prior to joining the Council, he was a fellow in international security studies at Yale University, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a professor at the National War College, and a professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia center at the National Defense University. He is married to Suzanne Maloney, 
Brookings Institution Deputy Director of Foreign Policy, also a Iran analyst.
Takeyh has written extensively on Iran and on U.S. policy toward the Middle East. He has testified several times before various committees of the U.S. Senate and has appeared as an Iran expert on a variety of television programs, including the PBS "Newshour".
Takeyh assisted Dennis Ross in 2009 in the latter's position as senior Iran advisor at the U.S. State Department.