Dr. Rachel Feder

Tel Aviv University

Bio

Rachel Kantz Feder is a senior researcher at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on modern Shi‘ism, the history of Iran and Iraq, and leftist movements and religious ideologies in the Middle East. She is the author of Revolutionary Shi‘i Modernism in Iraq: The Thought and Legacy of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, published by Cambridge University in April 2026.

“New Horizons” of Narrative Convergence: Aleksandr Dugin, Iranian Cultural Diplomacy, and Trends in American Political Discourse

Abstract

This article examines two decades of Iranian cultural diplomacy developed through Nader Talebzadeh’s collaboration with Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin. It argues that Iranian soft-war initiatives helped construct transnational networks linking actors across far-right, radical-left, anti-imperialist, and conspiratorial milieus. Through conferences, cultural production, religious exchanges, and alternative media, these networks facilitated the circulation and recombination of anti-liberal, multipolar, and conspiratorial narratives, revealing the offline infrastructure contributing to narrative convergence within contemporary American political discourse.