Savannah Council on World Affairs Lecture Series

Today, great power competition continues to resonate across the globe, and Presidents Trump,
Putin, and Xi increasingly seek a world divided into spheres of influence. Yet the Middle East
defies these boundaries and remains a region where global powers collide and where states are
increasingly asserting their autonomy. In this program, authoritative analyst Jonathan Panikoff
explores how the Middle East will continue to shape global affairs, driven by the backdrop of
its own intra-regional tensions and opportunities, with a focus on the roles of Israel, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other key state and non-state actors.

Jonathan Panikoff is a former national intelligence officer specializing in the Middle East. His
incisive analysis is widely sought and published by such magazines and journals as Time,
Newsweek, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He is director of the Scowcroft Middle East
Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, where he leads the organization’s work on pan-
regional Middle East politics and security, in addition to directing the South Asia portfolio. He
is concurrently a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center, focusing on
foreign investment and national security issues.

A former career U.S. intelligence officer, Panikoff served from 2015 to 2020 as deputy national
intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council, overseeing the
intelligence community’s analysis on the Levant and the Gulf. He later led analytic support for
the 2020 U.S. presidential transition and, in his final intelligence community role, served as
director of the Investment Security Group, overseeing efforts related to foreign investment
reviews, including matters involving the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
and Team Telecom.

Panikoff’s work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, Time, Newsweek,
and Just Security, among others. He is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on
CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, BBC, PBS, NPR, C-SPAN, and Fox Live. He is regularly cited by
such major publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post,
Financial Times, Reuters, and Associated Press.

He holds a law degree from Syracuse University College of Law, a master’s degree in
international relations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s
degree from the George Washington University. He is admitted to the New York and
Connecticut bars and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two daughters.