A Conversation with Robert Malley | 02/23/2026

Robert Malley is a lecturer and Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School and the author, with Hussein Agha, of Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. He served as Special Envoy for Iran from January 2021 to April 2023. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. Under President Barack Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region in 2015-2016 and, before that, as Senior Director for the Gulf Region and Syria.   Before joining the National Security Council staff in February 2014, Malley founded and directed the International Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa Program from January 2002. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Until January 2001, Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Malley first joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. In July 1997, he became Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor from July 1997 to September 1998, acting as an informal chief of staff for Samuel R. Berger.   Malley served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court in 1991-1992.  Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam, and of articles published in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and several other publications.