Bruce Riedel
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Center for Middle East Policy
Director - The Intelligence Project
Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. In addition, Riedel serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. He retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency, including postings overseas. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four 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.
Riedel was a member of President Bill Clinton’s peace process team and negotiated at Camp David and other Arab-Israeli summits and he organized Clinton’s trip to India in 2000. In January 2009, President Barack Obama asked him to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the results of which the president announced in a speech on March 27, 2009.
In 2011, Riedel served as an expert advisor to the prosecution of al Qaeda terrorist Omar Farooq Abdulmutallab in Detroit. In December 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron asked him to brief the United Kingdom’s National Security Council in London on Pakistan.
Riedel is the author of "The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future" (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), "Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad" (Brookings Institution Press, 2011; translated into Persian), "Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back" (Brookings Institution Press, 2013), and "JFK's Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War" (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). He is a contributor to "Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran" (Brookings Institution Press, 2009), "The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East" (Brookings Institution Press, 2011) and "Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988" (Brookings Institution Press, 2012). His book "What We Won: America’s Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989" (Brookings Institution Press, 2014) won the gold medal for best new book on war and military affairs at the INDIEFAB awards. His new book is "Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR" (Brookings Institution Press, 2017).
Riedel is a graduate of Brown (B.A.), Harvard (M.A.), and the Royal College of Defense Studies in London. He has taught at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies, and he has been a guest lecturer at Dartmouth, Harvard, Brown, and other universities. Riedel is a recipient of the Intelligence Medal of Merit and the Distinguished Intelligence Career Medal.
Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. In addition, Riedel serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. He retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency, including postings overseas. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four 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.
Riedel was a member of President Bill Clinton’s peace process team and negotiated at Camp David and other Arab-Israeli summits and he organized Clinton’s trip to India in 2000. In January 2009, President Barack Obama asked him to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the results of which the president announced in a speech on March 27, 2009.
In 2011, Riedel served as an expert advisor to the prosecution of al Qaeda terrorist Omar Farooq Abdulmutallab in Detroit. In December 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron asked him to brief the United Kingdom’s National Security Council in London on Pakistan.
Riedel is the author of “The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future” (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad” (Brookings Institution Press, 2011; translated into Persian), “Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back” (Brookings Institution Press, 2013), and “JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War” (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). He is a contributor to “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (Brookings Institution Press, 2009), “The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East” (Brookings Institution Press, 2011) and “Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988” (Brookings Institution Press, 2012). His book “What We Won: America’s Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989” (Brookings Institution Press, 2014) won the gold medal for best new book on war and military affairs at the INDIEFAB awards. His new book is “Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR” (Brookings Institution Press, 2017).
Riedel is a graduate of Brown (B.A.), Harvard (M.A.), and the Royal College of Defense Studies in London. He has taught at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies, and he has been a guest lecturer at Dartmouth, Harvard, Brown, and other universities. Riedel is a recipient of the Intelligence Medal of Merit and the Distinguished Intelligence Career Medal.
Both Egypt and the UAE have come out defending the Saudis. Perhaps they also played some role in the operation. There is no evidence of that aside from the suspicious stops in Cairo and Dubai.
Mohammed bin Salman tried very hard over more than three and a half years to fashion an image of himself as a reformer and even a revolutionary. Now that veil has been torn apart.
[The Saudis are in no position to retaliate to an arms sales ban by reducing oil exports. The Saudis] have serious cash flow problems with a war that costs them $50 billion a year. [The crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,] is shaking down his own businessmen because he needs the money.
I’m sure the demise of a Washington Post journalist is not a priority for a ‘fake news’ president. I don’t think the Trump administration is going to do anything about Khashoggi... Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, but that said, it has behaved within international norms for the most part. It did not used to kidnap and murder critics in such an egregious way. It didn’t round up hundreds of its own citizens and shake them down in a Ritz-Carlton [as Mohammed bin Salman did last fall]. It has not put a former crown prince under house arrest. This … reflects the somewhat precarious nature of bin Salman’s position. His legitimacy is open, and his judgment is reckless. Saudi royal family members have gone out of their way to say [the war in Yemen] was not a family decision... [bin Salman] continues to enjoy the protection of his father, and that’s what’s crucial. But I would not be surprised if he were moved out of the line of succession or there was an assassination attempt.
The crocodile tears of the crown prince and other Saudi officials are probably for deception and prevarication. The disappearance of Jamal [Khashoggi] fits with a pattern of crude intimidation and the silencing of criticism and dissent.