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Andrew Peek

  • Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council
  • Class of 2017

Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He is finishing his Ph.D. in international relations under Dr. Eliot Cohen at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before entering academia, Peek served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. General David Petraeus requested him personally for his Commanders’ Initiatives Group in Afghanistan, where he served as the strategic advisor on intelligence and special operations issues for General John Allen, Petraeus’s successor. In that role he was Gen. Allen’s personal advisor for direct action, foreign internal defense, intelligence, and Pakistani aspects of the war. He also advised on the commander’s meetings with foreign intelligence agencies, other national representatives, ministerial conferences at NATO, and interagency meetings with the White House. He subsequently served as a reservist with Joint Special Operations Command.

Prior to his service in Afghanistan, Peek served as the national security and foreign affairs advisor for two different U.S. Senators, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Mike Johanns of Nebraska. During the tenure of both, he developed a variety of bills and policy that were voted into law. These included the primary Iran sanctions bill of the 110th Congress, which served as the basis in the next Congress for the most significant sanctions law on Iran in 15 years. Peek graduated from Princeton with High Honors in 2003 and received a Master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2005, where he served as a research assistant for Dr. Graham Allison’s U.S. Foreign Policy Course. He is a Life Member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.