Reuel Marc Gerecht is an American writer and political analyst focused on the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing primarily on the

, Islamic militancy, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is a former director of the

Project for the New American Century The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeAmerican Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...

. Earlier in his career Gerecht was a case officer at the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, primarily working on Middle Eastern targets.

Biography

In the 1990s, while Gerecht was living abroad, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of Edward Shirley. He writes regularly for ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', and many other publications. A contributing editor at ''

The Weekly Standard ''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "re ...

'', Mr Gerecht has been a foreign-affairs columnist for ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

'' magazine's foreign-affairs blog and a foreign correspondent for ''

The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

''. Gerecht has advocated the re-establishment of diplomatic relationships with Tehran before any military action is taken. According to journalist

Andrew Sullivan Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...

, Gerecht also defends the use of physically coercive interrogation techniques in the

ticking time bomb scenario The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether interrogational torture can ever be justified. The scenario can be formulated as follows: Suppose that a person with knowledge of an immin ...

.Andrew Sullivan blog
/ref> Gerecht has been associated with the neoconservative movement in foreign affairs, which advocates an active and interventionist American foreign policy. He was a strong proponent of military strikes against the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan in the 1990s, a backer of both the Afghan and Iraq wars (authoring, among other pieces, the article

, written in 2002 as part of pro war opinion-making that would culminate in the

2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including ...

), and has repeatedly urged a hawkish approach toward Iran, including preemptive strikes against Iran's nuclear sites and military retaliation for the alleged Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador in the United States. Gerecht was a harsh critic of the Central Intelligence Agency's performance in the 1990s against the Islamic terrorist target, and has often written about the difficulties of reforming the American intelligence establishment. A disciple and friend of the Princeton historian

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...

, Gerecht has nevertheless argued that Islamic fundamentalists, not Muslim liberals, will be the engine of political reform and democratization in the Middle East. His views have often been condensed into the remark, "No Thomas Jefferson without Martin Luther".

Bibliography

* ''Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997). * ''The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy'' (AEI press, 2004) * ''The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East'' (Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 2011)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gerecht, Reuel Marc Living people American Enterprise Institute People of the Central Intelligence Agency The Weekly Standard people Year of birth missing (living people)

Biography

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links