Nawaf Essam Ahmad Obaid (Arabic: نواف عصام احمد عبید) is a Saudi political scientist specializing in intelligence studies, defence doctrine, nuclear strategy, and Middle Eastern security affairs.https://edof.org/en/about/board/nawaf-obaid/ Obaid previously served as advisor to the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the UK, Prince Muhammad bin Nawaf. He is currently a senior research fellow at the Department of War Studies at King's College London and the Founder and Managing Director of Project AURORAH GeoSignal MASINT System, a fused intelligence architecture focused on the integration of GEOINT, SIGINT, MASINT, OSINT, and strategic operational sequencing for military and geopolitical analysis.
Early life and family background Educated in Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Obaid studied International Relations at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, security studies at Department of Political Science at MIT, and later completed doctoral studies in War Studies at King’s College London.https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/06/obaid-joins-belfer-center-as-visiting-fellow/ His research and writing have focused on geopolitics, military affairs, intelligence, energy security, regional strategy, and state resilience across the Middle East.
Obaid was born into the Obaid family, a prominent family originating from Yanbu Al Nakhal (“Yanbu the Oasis”), a historic settlement in the Madinah Province of western Saudi Arabia. The family traces its ancestry to the Filali tribal confederation, one of the historic Arab lineages whose branches spread across the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.
Through the Al Dakhil branch (named after Al-Hassan Ad-Dakhil) of the wider Filali tribal lineage, the Obaid family shares ancestral connection with the Sharifian Alawi dynasty, the ruling royal house of Morocco. Both families trace their origins to the Dakhil line of the Filali tribal tradition emanating from Yanbu Al Nakhal.
The Obaid family has long been associated with public service, commerce, scholarship, publishing, and state-building in Saudi Arabia. Growing up within a family deeply involved in public affairs, diplomacy, and intellectual life, Obaid developed an early interest in history, politics, international relations, and strategic affairs, interests that would later shape both his academic career and public service.https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/saudi-king-fahd-dies
Among the family’s most prominent figures was Obaid’s grandfather, Sayyid Ahmad Mohammed Obaid, one of the early technocrats and media pioneers of the modern Saudi state. Following the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, King Abdulaziz entrusted him with a series of senior governmental responsibilities as the authority of the newly unified state expanded across the Arabian Peninsula.
During the 1934 Saudi–Yemeni War, Sayyid Ahmad Obaid served as battlefield communications coordinator for Saudi military operations that culminated in the Treaty of Taif, which formally incorporated Jizan, Najran, and Assir into Saudi Arabia. He subsequently joined the Ministry of Finance, reporting directly to Finance Minister Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Hamdan, and was tasked with establishing customs administration and border-control offices along the Kingdom’s newly defined frontiers with Yemen, Kuwait, and Iraq.
He later served as Saudi Arabia’s financial and customs attached to pre-independent Kuwait prior to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two states when Kuwait finally gained its independence. Returning to Riyadh, he became Director General of the Ministry of Finance before being appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture in 1953 under the ministry’s first minister, late Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. After more than two decades of public service, he retired from government in 1955.
Sayyid Ahmad Obaid is also widely credited with helping introduce modern commercial printing to Saudi Arabia through the launch of Al Riyadh Magazine in 1955, one of the Kingdom’s earliest modern publishing and printing ventures.
Public service continued across subsequent generations of the family. Obaid’s uncle, Taher Ahmad Obaid, served as Deputy Minister of Agriculture during the reign of King Faisal, while another uncle, Dr. Ibrahim Ahmad Obaid, served as Deputy Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones (PTT) during the reign of King Fahd.
He is also a nephew of Dr. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, who served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
In addition to its contributions to government service, the family has been active in publishing, academia, diplomacy, and international affairs, establishing a tradition of public engagement that has continued across multiple generations and has significantly influenced Nawaf Obaid’s own academic, policy, humanitarian, and public-service career.
Education IB – Humanities; International School of Geneva, 1982–1993. BS – International Relations; Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, 1994–1996. MPP – International Security & Political Economy; John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, 1996–1998. PhD – Political Science (Security Studies) at MIT Center for International Studies; Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000–2001 (coursework completed). MA – War Studies; Department of War Studies at King's College London, 2010–2011. PhD – War Studies; Department of War Studies at King's College London, 2011–2013.
During Obaid's time at Harvard Kennedy School, he studied under American international relations theorists Graham Allison and Joseph Nye. Professor Nye served as the academic mentor and supervisor to Obaid while he wrote a controversial master's thesis on US-Saudi relations. Although Obaid was a student of Professor Nye, he subscribes to the neorealism school of thought in international relations theory and has been heavily influenced by eminent theorists Kenneth Waltz of Columbia University, Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, and Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera of MIT.
Career Public career Obaid started his public career in February 2003 by being named, alongside murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as a Special Advisor for Strategic Communications to the Saudi Ambassador to the UK and then to the US. Based between London and Washington DC, he held the position until December 2006. Obaid is widely considered to having been an intimate friend of Khashoggi after working closely together for over fifteen years. They had a significant falling out several months before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul because, according to former French intelligence officials, Obaid discovered that Khashoggi was involved in several covert political initiatives to attempt to undermine Saudi domestic security.
In December 2006, Obaid was fired from the staff of Prince Turki Al Faisal, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, for publishing an opinion piece in The Washington Post "contending that 'one of the first consequences' of an American pullout of Iraq would 'be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.'" The article also suggested that the Kingdom could cut oil prices in half, which "would be devastating to Iran." While the Saudi government disavowed the piece and Prince Turki Al Faisal cancelled his contract as a result, "Arab diplomats said...that Mr. Obaid's column reflected the view of the Saudi government, which has made clear its opposition to an American pullout from Iraq."
Then, in February 2007, he became a Special Advisor to the President of Citizens Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, based between Riyadh and Jeddah. Leaving that position in January 2011, he shortly thereafter became the Counselor for Foreign Media Affairs to the Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja, then Saudi Minister of Culture and Information in Riyadh. In May 2011 he became the Counselor to Prince Mohammed bin Nawwaf Al Saud, then Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He held this position until January 2016.
From September 2014 up to the present, Obaid has also served as CEO of the Essam and Dalal Obaid Foundation (EDOF), based in Geneva, Switzerland. EDOF was founded by Obaid and his two brothers to honour the humanitarian legacy of their parents. EDOF supports organizations that are doing important work in the fields of medical research and social progress in order to help them fulfill their already proven track record of success. Some of the projects that EDOF has supported include initiatives with the Mayo Clinic, the CNN Freedom Project, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among others. EDOF also funded the creation of the Essam and Dalal Obaid Center for Reconstructive Transplant Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Since April 2018, Obaid has been a Commissioner at the Commission for International Justice & Accountability (CIJA). CIJA is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to conducting criminal investigations during armed conflict and analysing evidence of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. CIJA is apolitical and carries out its investigative activities independently from any government. Through its work CIJA provides support for local police forces, war crimes and counterterrorism investigations, and countering violent extremism (CVE) programmes.
CIJA has been especially implicated in the Syrian civil war. Since 2012, CIJA Investigators have smuggled more than a million government documents out of Syria, many of them from top secret intelligence facilities. "The documents are brought to the group's headquarters, in a nondescript office building in Western Europe, sometimes under diplomatic cover. There, each page is scanned, assigned a bar code and a number, and stored underground. A dehumidifier hums inside the evidence room; just outside, a small box dispenses rat poison".
The so-called "Assad Files" have allowed CIJA investigators and criminal lawyers to capture top secret intelligence and security reports and tie the Syrian regime to mass torture and killings, and crimes against humanity.
For the past several years, CIJA has been at the receiving end of a massive covert Russian disinformation campaign to discredit it. In 2021, the BBC revealed that CIJA operatives had unraveled a network of Russian informants within Britain's elite institutions of higher education. These academics, masquerading as members of the so-called "Syria Working Group" are aiding Russia's main intelligence services to wage a war of false news and alternative facts using conspiracy theories to justify their support for the Assad regime in Syria. As the BBC reported, "A British professor corresponded for months with a man called only "Ivan", seeking assistance to discredit an organisation [CIJA] that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice. He also asked "Ivan" to investigate other British academics and journalists. The email exchange, seen by the BBC, reveals how, a decade on from the start of the Syrian conflict, a battle is still being waged in the field of information and misinformation."