Iran-Saudi Arabia Tensions Flare

As tensions flare between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Middle East Program Fellow David Ottaway provides perspective on the troubled relationship and its impact on the region.

David B. Ottaway, a Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, received a BA from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1962 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1972. He worked 35 years for The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe and later as a national security and investigative reporter in Washington before retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards for his reporting at home and abroad and was twice nominated a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, published in November 2008, was The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America’s Tangled Relationship with Saudi Arabia.  He is currently working on a book regarding the changes underway in the Arab world.