Patrick Lyell Clawson (born March 30, 1951^[1]) is an Americaneconomist and Middle East scholar. He is currently the Director for Research atThe Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior editor ofMiddle East Quarterly.

Born inAlexandria, Virginia, Clawson graduated with a B.A. fromOberlin College in 1973 and earned a Ph.D. fromThe New School for Social Research in 1978. He taught atSeton Hall University from 1979 to 1981 and served as a senior economist for theInternational Monetary Fund from 1981 until 1985, when he took a position as a senior economist with theWorld Bank.

Clawson has published many articles on the Middle East inForeign Affairs,International Economy,Orbis,Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics andMiddle East Journal. He has additionally published opinion pieces inThe New York Times,Wall Street Journal, andWashington Post. Clawson was co-convenor of the Presidential Study Group organized byThe Washington Institute.^[2] The group published its recommendations to the newBush administration in the form of a monograph,Navigating Through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century, published byThe Washington Institute in 2001.

Clawson drew criticism for a presentation on September 21, 2012, in which he suggested the United States could consider the use of "crisis initiation" as a method of provokingIran into war. This was part of a presentation given with Dennis Ross and David Makovsky atThe Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitledHow to Build U.S.-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout.^[3][4][5]

Clawson first appeared onC-SPAN in a 1990 Forum as a Research Scholar for theForeign Policy Research Institute, and has since appeared upwards of two dozen times.^[6]

Books

• The Andean Cocaine Industry, with Rensselaer W. Lee III.St. Martin's Press, August 1996.ISBN 978-0312124007.^[7]
• Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions, withHenry D. Sokolski.Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.ISBN 1584871490.
• Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos, withMichael Rubin.Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.ISBN 1403962766.
• The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars, with Rudi Matthee &Willem Floor. London:I.B. Tauris, 2013.ISBN 978-1780760797.^[8]

Books edited

• Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran, withHenry D. Sokolski. Carlisle, Pennsylvania:Strategic Studies Institute,U.S. Army War College, October 2005.ISBN 158487211X.JSTOR resrep12040.

Contributed works

• "'Guided Markets': Carter's Energy Plan and the Restructuring of U.S. Capital," with Allen Kaufman.Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, edited byHolly Sklar. Boston:South End Press, 1980, pp. 324–338.
• "U.S. Sanctions."The Iran Primer.Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010.

Reports

• Iran's Strategic Intentions and Capabilities. Washington, D.C.: Institute for National Strategic Studies, April 1994.

Articles and essays

• "Ambitious Iran, Troubled Neighbors," withDaniel Pipes.Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 1, January 1, 1992.
• "How to Eliminate Iran's Nuclear Weapons."Claremont Review of Books, Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring 2006.
• "Saving the Neocons," with Stephen Wrage, Peter Abbott, Flynt Leverett and Joshua Muravchik.Foreign Policy, No. 158, January–February 2007, pp. 6, 8, 10, 12.
• "The 8 Books Ahmadinejad Doesn't Want You to Read."Foreign Policy, June 24, 2009.
• "No Nixon-to-China Moment Here."Foreign Policy, October 1, 2009.
• "How Much Brinksmanship Will Israel Tolerate?"The Atlantic, August 16, 2010.
• "The U.S. and Israel: Same View of Threat, Different View on Force."The Atlantic, August 20, 2010.
• "Sanctions Are Only a Stop-Gap."Foreign Affairs, May 8, 2012.
• "Don't Throw Iran's Democrat's Under the Bus."Foreign Policy, April 13, 2012.
• "Will Iran Weather the Economic Storm?"Foreign Policy, October 11, 2012.
• "Obama, Offer Iran a Generous Deal."The Atlantic, January 16, 2013.
• "Iran Can't Agree to a Damn Thing."Foreign Policy, February 20, 2013.
• "Stalemate's End?"Foreign Policy, September 19, 2013.
• "Talk is Cheap."Foreign Affairs, September 24, 2013.

• Iranistics
• Middle East Quarterly
• US-Iran relations
• Washington Institute for Near East Policy

• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Biography at RightWeb
• Biography at theStrategic Studies Institute (SSI)
• Biography atThe Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• Patrick Clawson discography atDiscogs
• Patrick Clawson atInternet Archive
• Patrick Clawson atWorldCat
• References to Patrick Clawson at theCouncil on Foreign Relations
• Works by Patrick Clawson atThe Atlantic
• Works by Patrick Clawson atForeign Affairs
• Works by Patrick Clawson at theMiddle East Forum

• Living people
• Oberlin College alumni
• The New School alumni
• Seton Hall University faculty
• 1951 births
• Middle Eastern studies in the United States
• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• Middle East Forum
• Economists from New York (state)
• 21st-century American economists

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox person with deprecated parameters
• People appearing on C-SPAN