"Patrick Lyell Clawson" is an American economist and Middle East scholar. He is currently the Director for Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior editor of Middle East Quarterly.

Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Clawson graduated with a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1973 and earned a Ph.D. from The New School/The New School for Social Research in 1978. He taught at Seton Hall University from 1979–1981 and served as an economist for the International Monetary Fund from 1981 until 1985, when he took a position as a senior economist with the World Bank.

In September 2012, Clawson suggested that the United States consider the use of "crisis initiation" as a way to provoke Iran into war.

More Patrick Clawson on Wikipedia.

He is not an agent, but he wants to work with Iran to the extent it is compatible with Iraq's best interest.

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Iraq has performed miracles in going from destroyed ministry buildings and staff not showing up for work to creating a government. But it is still a fragile society that lacks skilled decision makers and political consensus, so it won't have a fully functioning government anytime soon.

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I don't think they would go out of their way to violate protocol.

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There are a lot of people in Iran who think this guy's a real risk-taker. Let's play on the splits.

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I think he is mistaken in his optimism.

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The focus on smart sanctions makes sense because they work the best. Big economic sanctions would not only be difficult to get, but Iran has vast foreign reserves from its oil revenues, so they can ride out what gets thrown at them.

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Iraqi businessmen had been bringing back the funds that they held abroad. Now that it doesn't look like the oil income is going to come, Iraq is going to be in a very difficult situation. There's going to be a tightening of belts that are already so tight that they're cutting off circulation.

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Had the matter been delayed for a whole month it would have been portrayed by Iran as a victory.

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He is a very ambitious man, he thinks he has a role to play in the future of the country.

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