Andrew J. Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Senior Fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, where he focuses on Syria, the Levant, and U.S. Middle East Policy, and Director of the Institute's Junior Research Program.
Mr. Tabler served as senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Syria Engagement at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (2020-2021) and director for Syria at the National Security Council's Middle East Affairs Directorate (2019) during the final days of the ISIS caliphate and the rigorous debate over the U.S. troop presence in Syria.
Before joining the Institute in 2008, Mr. Tabler lived, worked, and studied extensively in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. During fourteen years of residence in the Middle East, he served as co-founder and editor-in-chief of Syria Today, Syria's first private-sector English-language magazine; as a consultant on U.S.-Syria relations for the International Crisis Group (2008); and as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs (2005-2007), writing on Syrian, Lebanese, and Middle Eastern affairs.
Following his graduate work in Cairo, Egypt, Mr. Tabler held editorships with the Middle East Times and Cairo Times, where he focused on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, before becoming senior editor and director of editorial for the Oxford Business Group (OBG).
Mr. Tabler’s articles and opinion pieces on Middle East affairs and U.S. foreign policy have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. He has also appeared frequently in interviews with CNN, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, and the BBC. He is author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria (Lawrence Hill Books).
Education
M.A., comparative politics, American University in Cairo (AUC); Certificate, Arabic Language Institute, AUC; B.A., Washington & Jefferson College
