Steven Simon is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining the Council, Simon 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 US security studies.

Before moving to Britain in 1999, Simon served in the Clinton White House for over five years as director for global issues and senior director for transnational threats. Simon is the author of the February 2007 Council Special Report “After the Surge: The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq.” His coauthored book The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House, 2002) won the Council on Foreign Relations 2004 Arthur Ross Book Award. A frequent guest on CNN, BBC, ABC, 60 Minutes, Nightline, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Fox, and NPR, Simon also contributes regularly to a number of top American newspapers and policy journals. Simon has a BA from Columbia University in classics and Near Eastern languages, an MTS from the Harvard Divinity School, and an MPA from Princeton University. He was a fellow at Brown University and a fellow in international affairs at Oxford University.