Michael Pregent

Michael Pregent was a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

Mr. Pregent is a senior Middle East analyst, a former adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Mr. Pregent is also a former intelligence officer with over 28 years of experience working on security, terrorism, counterinsurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. He is an expert in Middle East and North Africa political and security issues, counterterrorism analysis, stakeholder communications, and strategic planning.

He spent considerable time working against malign Iranian influence in Iraq as an advisor to Iraq’s security and intelligence apparatus, including an embedded advisory role with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s extra-constitutional Office of the Commander in Chief, an office set up to ensure Iranian-backed Shia militia party control of Iraq’s security and political process.

Mr. Pregent served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, as a liaison officer in Egypt during the 2000 intifada, as a counterinsurgency intelligence officer at US Central Command (CENTCOM) in 2001, and as a company commander in Afghanistan in 2002.

Mr. Pregent served as an embedded advisor with the Peshmerga in Mosul from 2005 to 2006. Also, as a civilian subject matter expert working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, he served as a political and military advisor to US Forces–Iraq focusing on reconciliation, the insurgency, and Iranian influence in Iraq from 2007 to 2011. He was a violent extremism and foreign fighter analyst at CENTCOM from 2011 to 2013.

He holds a master’s in strategic public relations from George Washington University and is a graduate of the US Army’s Defense Language Institute in modern standard Arabic and Egyptian dialect.

Mr. Pregent has numerous publications on ISIS, Iran’s Qods Force, Syria, and Iraq. His writings have been published in Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Tower, Long War Journal, New America Foundation, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Business Insider, and the Daily Beast.

He frequently appears as an expert analyst on Shia militias, Iran, Iraq, and ISIS on BBC World News, Al-Jazeera International, CNN, CNN International, and Fox News.