Alan Pino is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. In 1983, Pino began his thirty-seven-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covering the Middle East and counterterrorism. During his time at the CIA, Pino worked as an analyst and manager on every country in the Middle East and North Africa region.

In the 1980s, Pino worked as an analyst covering Iraq and Iran, focusing on the Iran-Iraq War, the Iran contra scandal, and Iran’s efforts to advance its revolutionary aims in the region. During the 1990s, Pino handled several new Middle East portfolios, including the regional and international fallout from Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and prospects for Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian peace. In the latter part of the decade, Pino served as chief of analysis for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, where he monitored terrorist groups worldwide, with a focus on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and efforts to analyze and disrupt his growing terrorist network.

In 2005, Pino began a fifteen-year tour as the national intelligence officer for the Near East in charge of overseeing intelligence assessments representing the view of the entire intelligence community on key issues of concern to the President and senior policymakers. Pino also helped explain the intelligence community to the best outside experts on the Middle East through conferences that brought think tankers, academics, journalists, current and former policymakers, and intelligence analysts together to share views and engage in dialogue.

Since retiring in April 2020, Pino has taught courses on Iran and the broader Middle East at the Texas A&M Bush School in Washington, DC; worked as an adjunct at Rand Corporation dealing with the Middle East; and served as the primary drafter for the Atlantic Council’s paper on US policy toward Iran as part of the Iran strategy project.

Pino received a master’s degree in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.