PRESENTED BY
Since its launch in 2016, the UAE Security Forum has played a vital role as a venue where U.S. and regional partners gather to find creative solutions to some of their most pressing common challenges. This year’s forum assessed geopolitical trends in the region. AGSIW brought together academics, policymakers, and practitioners to identify key risks, examine current mitigation efforts, and recommend policy solutions for governments and the private sector.
Anwar Gargash is the diplomatic advisor to the president of the United Arab Emirates. He is recognized as one of the main public voices of the UAE government.
Gargash served as a professor of political science at the UAE National University. In 2006, he was appointed minister of state for federal national council affairs. Two years later, he was named minister of state for foreign affairs.
As chair of the National Elections Committee, Gargash oversaw the UAE’s first elections in 2006 and created an information technology team that established the first e-voting system in the Middle East. He continues to help shape the UAE’s political and economic future by serving as chair of several government entities, including the National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking and the boards of trustees of the Dubai School of Government and Al Owais Cultural Foundation.
Brett McGurk is the National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. He served as special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL at the U.S. Department of State. In this assignment, McGurk led a global coalition of 68 members and coordinated all aspects of U.S. policy related to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. McGurk previously served as deputy special presidential envoy from 2014-15. In President Barack Obama’s administration, he served as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs with a focus on Iraq and other regional initiatives, as a special advisor to the National Security Staff, and as senior advisor to Ambassadors Ryan Crocker, Christopher Hill, and James Jeffrey in Baghdad, Iraq.
During President George W. Bush’s administration, from 2005-09, McGurk served as director for Iraq and then as special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, McGurk served as a lead negotiator and coordinator during bilateral talks with the Iraqi government on both a long-term strategic framework agreement and a security agreement to govern the temporary presence of U.S. forces and the normalization of bilateral relations between Iraq and the United States. For these and other assignments he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor and Superior Honor Awards.
McGurk had earlier served as a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority and then the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad under Ambassador John Negroponte. He is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where he served as senior editor of the Columbia Law Review. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Dennis Jacobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He holds a BA in political science with honors, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Connecticut, and has held fellowship positions at Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad Ahmad is director and resident senior fellow of empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. empowerME focuses on shaping innovative investments to empower entrepreneurs, women, and the private sector in the Middle East. Ahmad is also managing partner of the venture capital firm Precinct Partners and serves on the boards of Homzmart, Tapal Tea, RSA Global, Mr. Usta, and The Luxury Closet. He was recently appointed to the board of Amideast, a leading U.S. nonprofit organization engaged in international education, training, and development activities in the Middle East and North Africa.
Based in the United Arab Emirates for 15 years prior to moving to Washington, DC, Ahmad has collaborated with business leaders and entrepreneurs to build leading companies in the Middle East. Through his work as a venture capital and growth investor, Amjad established two investment firms in the region that provided over $1 billion in funding to over 50 companies in sectors ranging from technology and education to health care and finance. During the past five years, Ahmad has focused his investments on entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology. Ahmad holds a master’s degree in international affairs with a concentration in international finance and economics from Columbia University and is a graduate of the general management program at Harvard Business School.
Hasan Alhasan is a research fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His current research interests include Asian-Middle Eastern relations with a focus on South Asia and the Gulf, the foreign policies and economic statecraft of the Gulf Arab monarchies, and regional security in the Gulf. Alhasan’s doctoral thesis at King’s College London examined Indian foreign policy towards the Gulf region.
Alhasan previously served for five years as senior analyst on foreign policy and national security at the Office of the First Deputy Prime Minister of Bahrain. He has earned degrees from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics and is a 2007 recipient of the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program in Bahrain.
Ali Alfoneh is a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a political scientist by training and the originator of the theory of transformation of the Islamic Republic into a military dictatorship. Alfoneh first put forward the theory in the spring 2006 edition of Udenrigs, journal of The Danish Foreign Policy Society. In the United States since 2007, Alfoneh advanced the theory in a series of essays published by the American Enterprise Institute culminating in Iran Unveiled: How the Revolutionary Guards are Transforming Iran from Theocracy into Military Dictatorship published by AEI Press in April 2013. He is also the author of Political Succession in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Demise of the Clergy and the Rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (2020).
Jon B. Alterman is a senior vice president, holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to joining CSIS in 2002, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. From 2009-19, Alterman served as a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. Earlier in his career, he was a scholar at the United States Institute of Peace and Washington Institute for Near East Policy as well as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, responsible for foreign policy and defense. From 1993-97, Alterman was an award-winning teacher at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in history.
Mohammed Baharoon is the director general of b’huth, which he established with Ahmed Al Mansoori in 2002 in Dubai, UAE. Baharoon received his master’s degree in English literature from Texas Tech University in 1995 and his English Major from Kuwait University in 1987. This led to a career in media where he worked as a reporter for Al Arabi Magazine, which was a premier cultural monthly in the Arab world. Baharoon continued his media career as a writer for Al Ittihad newspaper and then as an editor for Gulf Defence Magazine.
David B. Des Roches is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a senior international affairs fellow at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. He is an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, where he specializes in countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf Cooperation Council regional security, border security, weapons transfers, missile defense, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and emerging trends.
He joined NESA in 2011 after serving the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy in numerous positions, including as director of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, the Department of Defense liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, the senior country director for Pakistan, the NATO operations director, the deputy director for peacekeeping, and the spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Prior to that, he served in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy as an international law enforcement analyst and special assistant for strategy.
Des Roches retired as a colonel from a 30-year career in the active and reserve Army, serving on the Joint Staff, U.S. Special Operations Command staff, and in conventional and special operations troop units deployed throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Afghanistan. He is a regular commentator on regional affairs and author of numerous articles on Gulf security. He is the editor of The Arms Trade, Military Services and the Security Market in the Gulf: Trends and Implications (Berlin: Gerlach, 2016) and the theme editor of the Oxford Journal of Gulf Studies Spring 2016 special issue on security. He holds advanced degrees from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and Kings College London, which he attended as a British Marshall Scholar. Des Roches also holds an advanced degree from the U.S. Army War College, and a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy, West Point.
Kirsten Fontenrose is director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the security pillar within the Middle East programs. This effort focuses on the Middle East and North Africa’s ongoing security challenges, geopolitical competition, and the transatlantic community’s role in promoting security and stability to allow for political and economic development.
Fontenrose has 20 years of experience working with the national security apparatuses of countries in the Middle East and Africa from positions within the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, White House, private industry, and nonprofit sector. She served as senior director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, leading the development of U.S. policy toward the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan. Most recently, she was senior vice president for global relations at the Sonoran Policy Group.
Previously, Fontenrose led the Middle East and Africa team in the interagency Global Engagement Center, built relationships with military officers and diplomats from the Middle East and South Asia for the Near East Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, which she helped establish. Her career began in the nonprofit sector at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and in the private sector working on U.S.-Arab business projects with Arthur Houghton Associates.
Fontenrose’s editorials have been published in The Washington Post and Al-Anba. She has been interviewed on CNN, Fox News, BBC, MSNBC, PBS Newshour, NPR, and Voice of America and has been quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many others. She holds a BA in Middle East studies from the College of William and Mary, an MA in Middle East studies from Indiana University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a weekly columnist for Bloomberg and The National (UAE) and is also a regular contributor to many other U.S. and Middle Eastern publications. He has made thousands of radio and television appearances and was the Washington, DC correspondent for the Daily Star (Beirut). Many of Ibish’s articles are archived on his Ibishblog website.
His most recent book is What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal (ATFP, 2009). Ibish was included in all three years (2011, 2012, and 2013) of Foreign Policy’s “Twitterati 100,” the magazine’s list of 100 “must-follow” Twitter feeds on foreign policy.
Ibish is the editor and principal author of three major studies of Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans 1998-2000 (ADC, 2001), Sept. 11, 2001-Oct. 11, 2002 (ADC, 2003), and 2003-2007 (ADC, 2008). He is also the author of “At the Constitution’s Edge: Arab Americans and Civil Liberties in the United States” in States of Confinement (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), “Anti-Arab Bias in American Policy and Discourse” in Race in 21st Century America (Michigan State University Press, 2001), “Race and the War on Terror,” in Race and Human Rights (Michigan State University Press, 2005) and “Symptoms of Alienation: How Arab and American Media View Each Other“ in Arab Media in the Information Age (ECSSR, 2005). He wrote, along with Ali Abunimah, “The Palestinian Right of Return” (ADC, 2001) and “The Media and the New Intifada” in The New Intifada (Verso, 2001). He is the editor, along with Saliba Sarsar, of Principles and Pragmatism (ATFP, 2006).
Ibish previously served as a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, and executive director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership from 2004-09. From 1998-2004, Ibish served as communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Brian Katulis is a senior fellow and vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute. He was formerly a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he built the center’s Middle East program and also worked on broader issues related to U.S. national security.
He has produced influential studies that have shaped important discussions around regional policy, often providing expert testimony to key congressional committees on his findings. Katulis has also conducted extensive research in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. His past experience includes work at the National Security Council and the U.S. Departments of State and Defense.
Scott Livermore is the chief economist of Oxford Economics Middle East and is based in Oxford’s Dubai office. He is also the managing director of consultancy in the Middle East and Asia, as well as a member of Oxford Economics’ senior management team. Livermore leads many of the major projects in the Gulf and Asia, which have recently included capacity building, macroeconomic modeling, and policy impact assessment engagements for government institutions in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman and IFRS 9 and stress testing engagements in Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong.
After completing a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University’s St Edmund Hall and an MSc in economics at University College London, Livermore joined Oxford Economic Forecasting in 1997. During his initial five years at Oxford Economic Forecasting, he worked as a country analyst for a number of European countries and participated in numerous consultancy projects for a variety of international organizations, governments, and multinational companies.
Livermore rejoined Oxford Economics in 2005 as a senior economist after spending two years at the Ministry of Finance in the Slovak Republic assisting with the government’s medium-term macroeconomic framework and developing the analytical capacity of the ministry to prepare such forecasts. He has also held the positions of managing director of macro and industry services, managing director of macro consulting, and chief operating officer of Oxford Economics USA.
Steve Lutes is vice president of Middle East affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is responsible for managing the U.S.-Egypt Business Council, U.S.-Iraq Business Initiative, and U.S.-GCC Business Initiative, and he serves as executive director for each. In this capacity, Lutes is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs that promote U.S. business opportunities and investment in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain. He works closely with chamber member companies and business and government leaders to deepen and expand commercial relationships.
Lutes came to the chamber from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, where he was a senior legislative affairs specialist in the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. He focused on educating members of Congress on the benefits of trade and foreign direct investment and on advancing the administration’s trade agenda on Capitol Hill, including securing passage of the United States-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement. Lutes also served as the congressional liaison to the president’s Export Council and the Manufacturing Council for the Department of Commerce.
Lutes earned his bachelor’s degree in marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He serves on the board of directors of the American University in Iraq – Sulaimani Foundation.
Robert Mogielnicki is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He leads the Next Gen Gulf series examining technology trends in Gulf Arab states. An expert in the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, Mogielnicki previously served as a human resource development consultant for an Oxford-based research consultancy that operated across the Gulf region. Prior to his consulting career, he worked in journalism, covering political and economic developments in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia.
His book, A Political Economy of Free Zones in Gulf Arab States, was published by Palgrave Macmillan’s international political economy series in April 2021. Mogielnicki has authored several book chapters on the politics and economics of Gulf Arab states. His work and commentary on the region have appeared in Foreign Policy, Bloomberg, Axios, Forbes, Reuters, Nature, Financial Times, The Banker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, Los Angeles Times, S&P Global, and the Nikkei Asian Review, among other prominent outlets.
Mogielnicki received his DPhil from the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College, where he conducted research in conjunction with the Oriental Institute and Middle East Centre. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, his dissertation examines the political economy of free zones in Gulf Arab countries. He earned his MPhil in modern Middle Eastern studies from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and completed a master’s thesis on labor policy formulation and implementation in the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. He received his BA from Georgetown University as a double major in Arabic and government, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Mogielnicki specializes in the intersection of politics and economics across Gulf Arab states. He is particularly interested in how these geostrategic states engage in processes of economic transformation through trade and investment policies, labor market interventions, economic diversification, and technological innovation.
Mogielnicki speaks Modern Standard Arabic and the Egyptian dialect, and he possesses a working knowledge of the Tunisian dialect. He is a former recipient of the Sultan Qaboos Arabic Language Scholarship (2007-11) and served as a Critical Language Scholar in Tunisia in 2011. Mogielnicki has lived in the UAE, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, and Jerusalem.
Alia Moubayed is an experienced economist, policy practitioner, and strategist with more than 25 years of experience in government, international financial institutions, financial markets, and think tanks. She assumed research, policy, and management responsibilities in the design and implementation of economic and financial sector reforms covering the Middle East and North Africa and other emerging markets.
Moubayed is currently chief economist for the MENA region at a London-based investment bank. From 2017-18, she worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where she directed the Geo-economics and Strategy Program analyzing the interplay between economics and geopolitics at the global and regional levels and providing advice to government and private sector corporations. Moubayed also worked as chief economist for the MENA region at Barclays in London from 2008-17. She joined Barclays from the World Bank, which she integrated through the Young Professionals Program and became a senior economist responsible for analytical research, policy dialogue, and development policy lending to countries in Europe and Central Asia as well as Indonesia (2002-08). Moubayed was also a member of the Task Force for World Bank Engagement with the Arab World. Prior to that, she held policy responsibilities in various economic institutions in Lebanon, including: head of section at the research department at Banque du Liban; advisor to the minister of economy and trade and minister of Industry; and finally managing director of the Economic and Social Fund for Development at the Council for Development and Reconstruction.
Moubayed holds a BA in economics with distinction and an MBA from the American University of Beirut as well as a master’s equivalent in public policy and public administration from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in France. She has authored several publications and reports, and her commentary has featured in local, regional, and international media outlets. She is also the founder of the Association of Women in Economics Across the Middle East and North Africa aimed at promoting the role of women in economic policymaking in the region.
Ambassador William “Bill” Roebuck is the executive vice president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He most recently served as the deputy special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and a senior advisor to the Special Representative for Syria Engagement Ambassador James Jeffrey. Prior to his appointment, Roebuck served as a senior advisor to Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk from January to December 2018.
Roebuck served as ambassador to Bahrain from 2015-17. He was appointed deputy assistant secretary for Maghreb Affairs in January 2013 and assumed additional responsibility for Egypt Affairs in January 2014. He served as Chargé d’Affaires in Tripoli, Libya from January to June 2013, earning the Ryan C. Crocker Award for Outstanding Leadership in Expeditionary Diplomacy. From September 2010 to December 2012, he served as director for the Office of Maghreb Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Roebuck served as deputy political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from July 2009 to August 2010, covering Iraq’s external relations and leading the embassy’s and the resident international community’s efforts to support the critical March 2010 national elections.
Roebuck served as the deputy office director for Arabian Peninsula Affairs from 2007-09. From 2004-07, he served as the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. In his last year of that assignment, Roebuck served as the acting deputy chief of mission. Prior to his assignment in Syria, he covered political issues in Gaza, while assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv from 2000-03. He served in Washington as staff assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs from 1997-98.
Prior to joining the State Department, Roebuck worked as an English teacher and school administrator in Taif, Saudi Arabia from 1982-87. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Cote d’Ivoire from 1978-81.
Roebuck speaks French and Arabic. He hails from Rocky Mount, North Carolina and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Wake Forest University in 1978 and 1981, respectively, and his law degree from the University of Georgia in 1992.
Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman is president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He previously served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2016-19 and U.S. ambassador to Kuwait from 2014-16. From 2013-14, he served as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, working on Iraq issues and the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Silliman was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq from 2012-13, minister counselor for political affairs in Baghdad from 2011-12, and deputy chief of mission in Ankara, Turkey from 2008-11. He joined the Department of State in 1984.
Silliman served as director and deputy director of the Department of State’s Office of Southern European Affairs, as political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, and as the regional officer for the Middle East in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. He worked as a political officer in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, as the desk officer for Lebanon, and as a staff assistant to the assistant secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Silliman began his career as a visa officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and a political officer in Tunis, Tunisia.
In 2018, Silliman received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from President Donald J. Trump. He has received numerous awards from the Department of State, including the Secretary’s Award for Public Outreach in 2007 and senior performance awards. Silliman received the Sinclaire Language Award in 1993 and the W. Averell Harriman Award for outstanding junior officer in 1988 from the American Foreign Service Association. He retired from the Foreign Service in April 2019 after 35 years.
Silliman received a Bachelor of Arts in political science, summa cum laude, from Baylor University in Texas, where he was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a Master of Arts in international relations from the George Washington University. Silliman speaks Arabic and French. He is married and has two adult children.
In addition to his position as president of AGSIW, Silliman also serves on the board of advisors of the Bilateral US-Arab Chamber of Commerce, which helps American businesses expand their international business and trade ties, especially in the Middle East and Gulf region. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy.
Sanam Vakil is the deputy director of the Middle East North Africa program at Chatham House, where she leads project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics. Vakil’s research focuses on regional security, Gulf geopolitics, and future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. She is also the James Anderson professorial lecturer in the Middle East Studies department at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS Europe) in Bologna, Italy. Before these appointments, Vakil was an assistant professor of Middle East studies at SAIS in Washington, DC. She served as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations also providing research analysis to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa department. Vakil is the author of Action and Reaction: Women and Politics in Iran (Bloomsbury 2013). She publishes analysis and comments for a variety of media and academic outlets. Vakil received her BA in political science and history from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MA and PhD in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University.
Ali Alfoneh, Senior Fellow, AGSIW
Hasan Alhasan, Research Fellow, Middle East Policy, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Mohammed Baharoon, Director General, b’huth
Sanam Vakil, Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Program, Chatham House
Moderator: Hussein Ibish, Senior Resident Scholar, AGSIW
Jon Alterman, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies
David B. Des Roches, Non-Resident Fellow, AGSIW; Associate Professor, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University
Kirsten Fontenrose, Director, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, Atlantic Council
Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow and Vice President for Policy, Middle East Institute
Moderator: Ambassador William Roebuck, Executive Vice President, AGSIW
Moderator: Ambassador Douglas Silliman, President, AGSIW
Amjad Ahmad, Director and Resident Senior Fellow, empowerME, Rafik Hariri Center, Atlantic Council
Scott Livermore, Chief Economist, Oxford Economics Middle East
Steve Lutes, Vice President, Middle East Affairs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Alia Moubayed, Managing Director, Jefferies
Moderator: Robert Mogielnicki, Senior Resident Scholar, AGSIW
Moderator: Ambassador Douglas Silliman, President, AGSIW
