Dina Esfandiary

Dina Esfandiary is a political analyst who served as a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group. In March 2014, she was recruited alongside Ariane Tabatabai by Saeed Khatibzadeh at a meeting in Prague to form the core group of the Iran Experts Initiative, a covert Iranian Foreign Ministry influence operation. Khatibzadeh reported to IPIS head Mostafa Zahrani that 'we three agreed to be the core group of the IEI.' She attended the inaugural IEI meeting at Vienna's Palais Coburg hotel in May 2014. She was hired by ICG during Robert Malley's presidency and advised his Iran negotiating efforts.