Overview and Policy Conclusions
Martin Indyk
Martin Indyk is the Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He served in several senior positions in the U.S. government, most recently as ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. He was also a founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has published widely on Palestinian-Israeli peace and other topics in Middle East policy, and is now working on a study of the Clinton Administration’s diplomacy in the region.
Richard Haass
Richard Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to this, Haass was Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State, where he was a Principal Adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He also served as U.S. Coordinator for Policy toward the future of Afghanistan and was the lead U.S. government official in support of the Northern Ireland peace process. Before this, Haass was Special Assistant to President George Bush and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. He also served in the Departments of State (1981-85) and Defense (1979-80) and was a Legislative Aide in the U.S. Senate. Haass has served as Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of international studies at Hamilton College, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Shibley Telhami
Shibley Telhami is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center. He is Anwar Sadat Professor at the University of Maryland and author of The Stakes: America and the Middle East (2002). His many other publications on Middle East politics include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (1990). His current research focuses on the media’s role in shaping Middle Eastern political identity and the sources of ideas about U.S. policy in the region.
Steven A. Cook
Steven Cook is the Douglas Dillon Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Ruling, But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns Hopkins University Press, May 2007). Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Cook was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–2002) and a Soref Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–96).
Counterterrorism
Daniel L. Byman
Daniel Byman is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center. He is Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies and an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has held positions with the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States (the "9/11 Commission"), the Joint 9/11 Inquiry and Senate Intelligence Committees, the RAND Corporation, and the U.S. government. He writes widely on issues related to U.S. national security, terrorism, and the Middle East. His latest book is Deadly Connections: State Sponsorship of Terrorism.
Steven Simon
Steven Simon is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining the Council, he specialized in Middle Eastern affairs at the RAND Corporation. He came to RAND from London, where he was the deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Carol Deane senior fellow in U.S. security studies. Before moving to Britain in 1999, Mr. Simon served at the White House for over five years as director for global issues and senior director for transnational threats.
Iran
Suzanne Maloney
Suzanne Maloney is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center. She has worked on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff where she provided policy analysis and recommendations on Iran, Iraq, the Gulf States and broader Middle East issues. Prior to joining the government, she was the Middle East Advisor at ExxonMobil Corporation and served as Project Director of the Task Force on US-Iran Relations at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ray Takeyh
Ray Takeyh is a Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a contributing editor of the National Interest. Dr. Takeyh was previously professor of national security studies at the National War College; professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University; fellow in international security studies at Yale University; fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Iraq
Kenneth M. Pollack
Kenneth Pollack is Director of Research at the Saban Center. He served as a CIA analyst and as the National Security Council’s director for Persian Gulf affairs and for Near East and South Asian affairs. His book, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (November 2004), examines the troubled history of U.S.-Iranian relations and offers a new strategy for U.S. policy towards Iran. He is also the author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq and Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (both 2002).
Stephen D. Biddle
Stephen Biddle is Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining the Council he held the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, and has held teaching and research positions at the University of North Carolina, the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, 2004), has won four prizes, including the Arthur Ross Award Silver Medal and the Olin Institute Huntington Prize.
Political and Economic Development
Tamara Cofman Wittes
Tamara Wittes is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center. She served as Middle East specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace and director of programs at the Middle East Institute. Her work has addressed a wide range of topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, humanitarian intervention, and ethnic conflict. Her current research concerns U.S. policy toward democratization in the Arab world and the challenge of regional economic and political reform. She is the author of the book How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process (2005).
Isobel Coleman
Isobel Coleman is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and Director of the Council’s U.S. foreign policy and women program. She recently coauthored Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2006). Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Coleman was CEO of a healthcare services company and a partner with McKinsey & Co. in New York. She was formerly a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at American University, where she taught political economy.
Proliferation
Bruce Riedel
Bruce Riedel is Senior Fellow for Political Transitions in Middle East and South Asia at the Saban Center. He retired in 2006 after 30 years service at the Central Intelligence Agency including postings overseas in the Middle East and Europe. He was a senior advisor on the region to the last three Presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council at the White House. He was also Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Near East and South Asia at the Pentagon and a senior advisor at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels. Mr. Riedel was a member of President Clinton’s peace team at the Camp David, Wye River, and Shepherdstown summits.
Gary Samore
Gary Samore is Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an expert on nuclear proliferation and arms control, especially in the Middle East and Asia. Dr. Samore has served as Vice President for Global Security and Sustainability at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow for Nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and served on the National Security Council from 1995 to 2001. He has authored numerous works on proliferation, including three “strategic dossiers” published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.