John Limbert is the Class of 1955 Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. During a thirty-four-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran from 2009 to 2010, and as ambassador to Mauritania between 2000 and 2003. From 1979 to 1981, Limbert was among fifty-two Americans held hostage after the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. He is the author of Iran: At War with History; Shiraz in the Age of Hafez; and Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History.