Robert Mason is an associate professor and director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo and a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He specializes in the politics and international relations of the Middle East. Mason has published five books, including on Saudi Arabia, Iranian foreign policy, the Arab uprisings, Muslim minorities, and Middle East politics. His most recent article is “Russia in Syria: An Unequivocal Return to the Middle East?” for Middle East Policy. Mason has been a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Centre, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for International Studies, and a visiting research fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies.