Nawaf Obaid

Obaid started his public career in February 2003 by being named, alongside murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as a Special Advisor for Strategic Communications to the Saudi Ambassador to the UK and then to the US. Based between London and Washington DC, he held the position until December 2006.[8] Obaid is widely considered to having been an intimate friend of Khashoggi after working closely together for over fifteen years.[9] They had a significant falling out several months before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul because, according to former French intelligence officials, Obaid discovered that Khashoggi was involved in several covert political initiatives to attempt to undermine Saudi domestic security.[10]

In December 2006, Obaid was fired from the staff of Prince Turki Al Faisal, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, for publishing an opinion piece[11] in The Washington Post "contending that 'one of the first consequences' of an American pullout of Iraq would 'be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.'"[12] The article also suggested that the Kingdom could cut oil prices in half, which "would be devastating to Iran."[11] While the Saudi government disavowed the piece and Prince Turki Al Faisal cancelled his contract as a result, "Arab diplomats said...that Mr. Obaid's column reflected the view of the Saudi government, which has made clear its opposition to an American pullout from Iraq."[12]

Then, in February 2007, he became a Special Advisor to the President of Citizens Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, based between Riyadh and Jeddah. Leaving that position in January 2011, he shortly thereafter became the Counselor for Foreign Media Affairs to the Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja, then Saudi Minister of Culture and Information in Riyadh. In May 2011 he became the Counselor to Prince Mohammed bin Nawwaf Al Saud, then Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom.[13] He held this position until January 2016.

From September 2014 up to the present, Obaid has also served as CEO of the Essam and Dalal Obaid Foundation (EDOF), based in Geneva, Switzerland.[14] EDOF was founded by Obaid and his two brothers to honour the humanitarian legacy of their parents. EDOF supports organizations that are doing important work in the fields of medical research and social progress in order to help them fulfill their already proven track record of success. Some of the projects that EDOF has supported include initiatives with the Mayo Clinic, the CNN Freedom Project, and the International Committee of the Red Cross,[15] among others. EDOF also funded the creation of the Essam and Dalal Obaid Center for Reconstructive Transplant Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.[16]

Since April 2018, Obaid has been a Commissioner at the Commission for International Justice & Accountability (CIJA). CIJA is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to conducting criminal investigations during armed conflict and analysing evidence of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. CIJA is apolitical and carries out its investigative activities independently from any government. Through its work CIJA provides support for local police forces, war crimes and counterterrorism investigations, and countering violent extremism (CVE) programmes.[17]

CIJA has been especially implicated in the Syrian civil war. Since 2012, CIJA Investigators have smuggled more than a million government documents out of Syria, many of them from top secret intelligence facilities. "The documents are brought to the group’s headquarters, in a nondescript office building in Western Europe, sometimes under diplomatic cover. There, each page is scanned, assigned a bar code and a number, and stored underground. A dehumidifier hums inside the evidence room; just outside, a small box dispenses rat poison".[18]

The so-called "Assad Files" have allowed CIJA investigators and criminal lawyers to capture top secret intelligence and security reports and tie the Syrian regime to mass torture and killings, and crimes against humanity.[19]

For the past several years, CIJA has been at the receiving end of a massive covert Russian disinformation campaign to discredit it.[20] In 2021, the BBC revealed that CIJA operatives had unraveled a network of Russian informants within Britain's elite institutions of higher education. These academics, masquerading as members of the so-called "Syria Working Group" are aiding Russia's main intelligence services to wage a war of false news and alternative facts using conspiracy theories to justify their support for the Assad regime in Syria. As the BBC reported, "A British professor corresponded for months with a man called only "Ivan", seeking assistance to discredit an organisation [CIJA] that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice. He also asked "Ivan" to investigate other British academics and journalists. The email exchange, seen by the BBC, reveals how, a decade on from the start of the Syrian conflict, a battle is still being waged in the field of information and misinformation."[21]

• June 2020 – Present | Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
• April 2017 – August 2018 | Inaugural Visiting Fellow for Intelligence and Defense Projects at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.[22]
• March 2017 | Co-founded the Saudi & GCC Security Project at Harvard University‘s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.[23]
• September 2012 – April 2017 | Visiting Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.[24]
• January 2008 – January 2016 | Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, the think tank of the King Faisal Foundation in Riyadh.[25]
• May 2004 – January 2007 | Adjunct Fellow for the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.[26]
• January 1999 – January 2000 | Research Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) in Washington DC.[27]

• May 2015 – May 2017 | Distinguished International Affairs Fellow at National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR) in Washington, DC.
• September 2014 – June 2017 | Senior Visiting Lecturer at Stirling University’s Division of History & Politics in Stirling, Scotland.