Reuel Marc Gerecht is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, and a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. A former Middle Eastern specialist in the CIA, Gerecht is a contributor to Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy (Editors Robert Kagan & William Kristol; Encounter Books, 2000) and is the author, under the pseudonym of Edward Shirley, of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997). He has also been a commentator on the Middle East, Shi’ism, terrorism, Afghanistan and intelligence issues in such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other leading American and international publications. He appears regularly on CNN, Fox News, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC, MSNBC, ABC News, NPR and the BBC.

Gerecht is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University, where he received his MA in Islamic history. He has also studied at the American University in Cairo, Cairo University, and the Muir Institute of Islamic Studies at Edinburgh University.