From 2012 to 2014, he will serve as codirector of the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. He is also a nonresident scholar in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously, he was the Persian Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group. He is the author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia and is currently writing a book entitled America’s Oil Wars. He is an editor of Middle East Report and has published widely, including in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. He received a PhD from Stanford University. He served as a Middle East and North Africa analyst for Freedom in the World.