Dania Thafer

Dania Thafer is a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs and the executive director of the Gulf International Forum in Washington, D.C. She is also a professorial lecturer at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Previously, she worked at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, in Washington DC, where she was responsible for building relationships with military officers and diplomats in the Middle East. She is a political scientist with a focus on political economy and international relations. Specifically, she is an expert on the Gulf’s regional geopolitics, U.S.-Gulf relations, and the political economy of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.

Thafer has authored numerous publications about the Arab Gulf states. Her commentary has been featured by various international media outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, BBC World, Washington Post, Forbes, Al Jazeera, and others. She has also co-authored two edited volumes: The Arms Trade, Military Services and the Security Market in the Gulf States: Trends and Implications and The Dilemma of Security and Defense in the Gulf Region. She is finishing a forthcoming book (Hurst and Co., 2022) on the effect of state-business relations on economic development in GCC states.