The Cedars and the Shamshir: Is Iran Losing its Grip on Lebanon | Fall 2025 Conference

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The Council of American Ambassadors invites you to listen the first panel from our fall 2025 conference. The topic of the conference was "Bullies without Borders: China, Iran, and Russia."

Our first panel, entitled "The Cedars and the Shamshir: Is Iran Losing its Grip on Lebanon," kicked off the conference with panelists diving into the affairs of the Middle East. Moderated by Council member Ambassador Ed Gabriel, former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco (1997-2001), the panelists engaged in debate over who is actually in control in Iran, how could systemic governance change in country, and what should U.S. policymakers anticipate in the short and long term.

Tune in to find out more!

About the Panelists:

Moderator: U.S. Ambassador (ret.) Ed Gabriel  

Ambassador Edward Gabriel has an extensive background in international affairs, having convened multilateral policy forums involving national security, trade, and energy issues. He has been involved in matters of Russian nuclear non-proliferation, and he has been active in advising the U.S. government on Middle East policy concerns. In 1997, he became the 16th U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco. In August 2022, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination by President Biden of Ambassador Gabriel to become a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Currently, Ambassador Gabriel is the volunteer President and CEO of the American Task Force on Lebanon, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build greater understanding and cultural ties between the United States and Lebanon.  Ambassador Gabriel serves on the boards of the American Schools of Tangier and Marrakech, the Keystone Policy Center, AMIDEAST, and Lebanese American University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and ACCESS Arab American of the Year, among others, and was recognized by the FBI for his work on bilateral security issues. He is the recipient of Lebanon’s National Order of the Cedar and Morocco’s Order of the Ouissam Alaouite. 

Panelists:

Pierre Ghanem 

Pierre Ghanem has been a national security and foreign affairs reporter with Al-Arabiya News since 2007. Over the years, he has interviewed several heads of state and published exclusive stories on U.S. policies towards the Middle East. Pierre started his television career in 1982 as news anchor for Tele Liban, where he covered the Israeli invasion, the Lebanon-Israel Negotiations, the civil war events of 1983, 1984, and subsequent events until 1991. He then moved to the United Kingdom and became the Executive Editor of MBC, the first privately-owned Arabic language televisionplatform. In 2004, Pierre established and launched the news department—known as AlHurra — at Middle East Broadcasting Network.  

Pierre earned a bachelor’s degree in law from the Lebanese University in 1982 and is married to Sanaa. They have four children. 

Ray Takeyh, Ph.D. 

Ray Takeyh is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His areas of specialization are Iran, U.S. foreign policy, and the modern Middle East.Takeyh is, most recently, the author of The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty. He is the coauthor of The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East and Revolution & Aftermath: Forging a New Strategy Toward Iran. He is author of three previous books, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic, and The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The US, Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1952-1957. He has written more than three hundred articles and opinion pieces in many news outlets including for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. Takeyh has testified more than twenty times before various Congressional committees. 

Prior to joining CFR, he has served as a senior advisor on Iran at the State Department and was a fellow at the Yale University, The Washington Institute of Near East Policy, and the Middle East Center at University of California, Berkeley. Takeyh holds a Ph.D. in modern history from Oxford University. 

Mona Yacoubian 

Mona Yacoubian is director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has more than thirty years of experience working on the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on conflict analysis, governance and stabilization challenges, and conflict prevention. She was previously vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), where she managed field programming in Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia as well as Washington, D.C.–based staff. In 2019, she served as executive director of the congressionally appointed Syria Study Group. From 2014 to 2017, Yacoubian served as deputy assistant administrator in the Middle East Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she had responsibility for programming across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Prior to joining USAID, Yacoubian was a senior adviser at the Stimson Center and a special adviser on the Middle East at USIP. From 1990 to 1998, Yacoubian served as the North Africa analyst in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.  

Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets, and she has testified to Congress six times. Yacoubian was a Fulbright scholar in Syria, where she studied Arabic at the University of Damascus from 1985 to 1986. She has held an international affairs fellowship with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and is a CFR member. She earned an M.P.A. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in public policy from Duke University.