Michael George Andrew Axworthy was a British academic, author, and commentator. He was the head of the Iran section at the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office between 1998–2000.
An inability to get a grant to study for a Ph.D. led Axworthy to apply for work at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a department of the UK government where he thought he would be able to indulge in his desire for a challenging job that involved living abroad. He stayed with the FCO until 2005, and was its Head of Iran Section in Tehran between 1998–2000 after spells working in Germany and Malta. Axworthy took leave from the FCO in 2000 and in 2005 he resigned his position. He later said: Axworthy became a Research Fellow at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham, in December 2001. From 2005, he taught Middle East history at Exeter University. He was appointed director of the university's newly established Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies in 2008 and since 2012, when he was awarded a Ph.D., was a senior lecturer in the university's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. He acknowledged the irony that the bureaucracy he tried to escape by leaving the FCO had now resurfaced in his academic life. He was a critic of the target-led UK higher education system – "Everybody is hyper-incentivised to pursue research grant applications and so on when everybody knows, including the Treasury and research councils, that presumably 90 per cent of that effort is completely wasted" – but accepted that there is probably no perfect solution. Axworthy was refused entry to Iran in his later years, during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was uncertain of the reasons for this, having been variously told that it was because of general relationship issues involving Iran and the UK and that it was due to the content of his own writings. On one occasion, in 2008, he and his family were all refused a visa at a time when his wife was due to take up the post of deputy head of mission for the FCO in Tehran; on another, in 2012, he was eventually granted a visa but was turned back at the border.
Writings, broadcasts and consultancy
In 2006, Axworthy took part in The Doha Debates, successfully arguing against the motion that "This House believes that Iran poses the greatest threat to security in the region." His first book, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant, was published in the same year and his second, Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran, was published in the following year. 2013 saw publication of Axworthy's book titled Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, which was described by James Buchan as a "calm and literary portrait". A review by Ervand Abrahamian raised several criticisms, including Axworthy's subscription to what he, Abrahamian, believes to be a "royal myth", and that the book deals better with contemporary events than it does with history. Nonetheless, Abrahamian says "If you were to read only one book on present-day Iran you could not do better than this." Axworthy wrote articles for academic journals and for publications such as The Guardian, Prospect and The Independent, and appeared on broadcast programmes such as Start the Week, Sky News, Today and A History of the World in 100 Objects, as well as on the Peterhouse team in the 2018 Christmas series of University Challenge. He was also an editor. Other work undertaken by Axworthy included consultancy for organisations such as Credit Suisse and Citibank. He also worked with the governments of the Netherlands, Norway, UK and United States, as well as NATO, for all of whom he gave briefings and other speaking engagements.
