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Expert Bio
Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.
Abrams was educated at Harvard College, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. After serving on the staffs of Senators Henry M. Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan, he was an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration and received the secretary of state's Distinguished Service Award from Secretary George P. Shultz. In 2012, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy gave him its Scholar-Statesman Award.
Abrams was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, from 1996 until joining the White House staff. He was a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001 and chairman of the commission in the latter year, and served a second term as a member of the Commission in 2012-2014. From 2009 to 2016, Abrams was a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which directs the activities of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was a member of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy from 2012 to 2023, and is a member of the Advisory Board established by the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA).
Abrams joined the Bush administration in June 2001 as special assistant to the president and senior director of the National Security Council for democracy, human rights, and international organizations. From December 2002 to February 2005, he served as special assistant to the president and senior director of the National Security Council for Near East and North African affairs. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy from February 2005 to January 2009, and in that capacity supervised both the Near East and North African affairs and the democracy, human rights, and international organizations directorates of the National Security Council.
Abrams rejoined the State Department in January 2019 as Special Representative for Venezuela, and in August 2020 took on the additional position of Special Representative for Iran. He left the Department in January 2021.
Abrams is the author of five books: Undue Process, Security and Sacrifice, Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and most recently Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring. He is the editor of three more, Close Calls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense and "Just War" Today; Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy; and The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy.
He is fluent in French and Spanish.
Affiliations:
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Israel Democracy Institute, international advisory council
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Jewish People Policy Institute, board member
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NGO Monitor, international advisory board
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Tikvah Fund, board chair
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Vandenberg Coalition, board chair
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Public Interest Fellowship, consultant
Current Projects
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The Roman Catholic Church's Synod can reassert Church leadership on human rights--or fail to do so.
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The Biden administration has announced that the Maduro regime will henceforth accept the return of Venezuelans deported from the United States. Will sanctions relief will soon follow?
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Despite some reports that conservatives in the United States favor abandoning Ukraine, 100 conservative leaders just published an open letter of support.
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The Biden administration is promoting greater oil exports by Iran and Venezuela, weighing oil prices more heavily than human rights in U.S. foreign policy.
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The repression of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua continues to deepen, but Pope Francis has not responded with the levels of support that are needed.
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While the Biden administration says it will maintain sanctions on the Maduro regime unless there is progress toward free elections, there is progress instead toward lifting sanctions while repression grows.
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There is a new debate over cutting military aid to Israel, but the arguments for doing so are poor.
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Concessions to the Maduro regime in Venezuela have permitted Chevron to produce more oil there, but have brought only more repression.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's courageous words this week in a Moscow courtroom remind us of the value of liberty and the need to defend it.
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The delay in inviting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington has been a foolish effort to intervene in Israeli politics while dangers in the Middle East have grown.
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The Biden administration continues to interfere in Israel's internal debate over the role of the judiciary, most recently adding unfair criticism of how demonstrations are being handled by police.
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Biden administration policy toward Venezuela was based on negotiating regime political concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions. But repression is growing and the policy is failing.
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The United States may soon be without ambassadors in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.
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The Biden administration decision to bar U.S. support for Israeli research institutions in the West Bank achieves nothing for Palestinians or for U.S. policy goals.
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By refusing to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the White House, the Biden administration is foolishly strengthening the very forces it most often criticizes in the Israeli government.
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Might the revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner group teach Xi Jinping the lesson that invasions are too uncertain and risky, and lead him away from invading Taiwan?
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Iran's president visited Latin America and the Caribbean, but the countries he did not visit are more significant than those he did.
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In its May/June issue "Foreign Affairs" magazine published an article by four well-known academics that called in essence for an end to the Jewish state that has existed since 1948.
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Human rights and the rule of law in Mexico are under siege. It would be a grave error for the United States to believe that its only interests there are trade and border security, and do not include democratic stability.
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The interventions in Israel’s bitter debate over judicial reform by both the Biden administration and many segments of the American Jewish community are striking—and need explaining.
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Israel's crisis is about judicial reform, but about deeper issues as well. Religion and state issues, and the role of the fast-growing haredi population, are at the heart of the matter.
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The Russia-Ukraine war has implications for the Middle East, Europe, and Asia and of course for U.S. foreign policy. In this speech I addressed them briefly.
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Doomsday predictions about the consequences of Israel's election are overwrought. Some of the proposed legal reforms would bring Israel's system closer to the U.S. model.
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President Biden has embraced "reforms" of the United Nations Security Council that are impractical and would undermine U.S. interests.