 The center was obliged to suspend its activities after the rupture of diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, and for the next two decades, AIIrS devoted itself to furthering Iranian Studies in the US by offering grants to students, holding conferences and fostering a sense of community in the field.Following the Dialogue of Civilizations initiative in 1998, AIIrS resumed sending scholars to Iran and instituted grants for Iranian scholars to research in the US.The core program of AIIrS is short-term grant-making for individual scholars.