Ariane Tabatabai

Ariane Tabatabai is chief of staff to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict in the US Defense Department. She has also served as an advisor to the Defense Department and the State Department. Before her government service, she was an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, an adjunct senior fellow with the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an international civilian consultant for NATO, a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a Truman national security fellow. She has also served as the director of curriculum and a visiting assistant professor of security studies at the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and was a post-doctoral fellow (2017-18) in the International Security Program and a Stanton nuclear security fellow (2013-14) in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in war studies from King’s College London.