Dr Nawaf Obaid

Dr Nawaf Obaid is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where his research covers intelligence and security studies, the history of nuclear weapons and the Cold War, Middle East studies and the defence doctrines of states including Saudi Arabia, France and Russia. He supervises doctoral research on Gulf security, intelligence architectures, energy geopolitics and military nuclear programmes.

Between 2002 and 2016 he held senior advisory posts in Saudi government and diplomacy: special adviser for political and strategic communications to the Kingdom's ambassadors in London and Washington, special adviser for foreign liaison and special envoy at the Royal Court, senior counsellor for global foreign media affairs at the Ministry of Media, and senior counsellor to the ambassador in London. He later co-founded and led the Essam & Dalal Obaid Foundation in Geneva, directing a US$100 million humanitarian programme across the Arab world, Africa and Asia, and has since been a senior adviser to the King Faisal Foundation and to CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation on its Gulf initiatives.

His academic career spans the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and the University of Stirling. Between 2012 and 2019 he held fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he was the inaugural Visiting Fellow of its Intelligence and Defense Projects and co-founded the Saudi Arabian and GCC Security Project. He served as a commissioner of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability from 2018 to 2025, and co-authored Murder by Chain of Command, a 2023 study of command responsibility in the Syrian conflict. He was educated at Georgetown, Harvard, MIT and King's College London, and works in English, Arabic and French.

He founded AURORAH to turn a fused, multi-source analytical method into a continuous strategic warning service, and leads its analytical approach, technical requirements and intelligence quality standards. Before the First Strike, forthcoming from Helion & Company, collects the memorandums and intelligence estimates he wrote during the 2026 Iran war, each preserved in its original, time-stamped form.

In 2026 he has been interviewed by CNN, France 24, Sky News, Al Jazeera's Inside Story and ABC Radio National, and writes regularly for Al Jazeera and Tomorrow's Affairs on Red Sea security, the Houthi campaign, Russia's space architecture and the emerging regional security order.

Publications, broadcasts and research