Robert Malley

Robert Malley is a seasoned conflict mediator with an exceptional track record in the Middle East. On behalf of the Obama administration, he led the negotiations on the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. Between 2021 and 2023, President Biden tasked him, as Special Envoy for Iran, with bringing the deal back to the table after it had been withdrawn by President Trump. Previously, Malley was one of the key negotiators on behalf of the Clinton administration in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including during the Camp David Summit with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in July 2000.

Malley was born in New York, the son of the prominent Syrian-Egyptian journalist Simon Malley. The world of his father – a born Jew but a convinced anti-Zionist, known for his support of revolutionary independence movements such as Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – would have a profound influence on Robert Malley.

In 1969 the young Malley moved to Paris with his family, where he attended a bilingual private school and was in the same class as Antony Blinken. During a school debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Blinken represented the Israeli side and Malley that of the Palestinians. A commitment to the Palestinian cause was instilled in Malley from an early age, but the form of his engagement differed from that of his father. The young Malley replaced his father’s uncompromising idealism – which made him hostile towards, for example, the US – with political realism and a strong belief in diplomacy.

After studying law at Harvard and obtaining a PhD in political philosophy at Oxford, Malley joined the US State Department in 1993. In 1998, he was appointed Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs; in that capacity, he was involved in the 2000 Camp David Summit. After Clinton’s presidency, Malley worked for the International Crisis Group, where he again focused on the Middle East. From 2014, Malley served on the National Security Council under President Obama; after 2015, he became Obama’s Special Assistant, coordinating foreign policy in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region. When Obama was succeeded by President Trump in 2017, Malley returned to the International Crisis Group. President Biden appointed Malley as Special Envoy for Iran following his inauguration in 2021. Malley currently teaches at Yale.

With his background, knowledge and wealth of experience, Malley possesses a unique combination of perspectives. He writes on Middle Eastern affairs for journals and newspapers such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books and Foreign Affairs. In 2025 he co-authored the book Tomorrow is Yesterday, about the failed peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, together with the Palestinian Hussein Agha — who served as an advisor to Arafat. The authors argue that after 7 October 2023, the world was dragged back into the past and confronted with the complexity of a history that has too often been set aside out of ignorance, unwillingness or in favor of simplistic solutions. The book offers a disturbing insight into a diplomatic farce and asks how things could be different.