Julia Tomasso

Julia Tomasso is a Research Fellow at IRIS, working within the Defence, Strategy and Armament and Middle East / North Africa programmes. She specialises in the defence industries of the Middle East and the industrial policies underpinning them. A Turkish and Persian speaker, her research focuses in particular on the Turkish, Iranian and Israeli defence industrial and technological bases (DITBs), as well as those of the Gulf monarchies. Her work on Iran also examines military strategy, drone and missile programmes, the nuclear programme and networks used to circumvent economic sanctions. More broadly, she studies how these countries’ industrial policies interact with national strategic cultures, how they reshape regional balances of power and what they mean for the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB).

She holds a dual bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Islamic Studies from McGill University in Montreal and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS University of London. She previously worked at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, focusing on Iranian military doctrine. She subsequently served as a defence editor specialising in Iran at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum.