Jonathan R. Cohen is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and Middle East Programs, focusing on US-Egypt relations, Israel-Palestine relations, Iraq, regional security and the role of the United States, and European security affairs, primarily in the Eastern Mediterranean (Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus). He is also a strategic advisor and international consultant who served as a US diplomat for over thirty-five years, including as ambassador to Egypt and the United Nations; as deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia covering Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus; as deputy chief of mission in Baghdad and Nicosia; and as acting deputy chief of mission in Paris.
He was previously a political minister counselor in Paris, political-military counselor in Rome, political advisor to Operation Northern Watch/Iraq Watcher in Ankara, political advisor to the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance-North in Erbil, and a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority Governance Team in Baghdad. Before that, he was a political officer in Stockholm, liaison to the Hungarian chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and executive assistant to the head of the OSCE Bosnia Mission in Vienna, as well as OSCE and NATO/Bosnia officer at the State Department and Secretariat Staff/Advance Team member for three secretaries of state. Earlier in his career, he was the US Agency for International Development coordinator and economic officer for the West Bank at the US Consulate General in Jerusalem and refugee protection officer in Bangkok.
Cohen is the recipient of a Presidential Rank Award for sustained superior accomplishment in foreign policy, the State Department’s Charles Cobb Award for success in trade development and promotion and the State Department’s James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence, a Distinguished Honor Award, and multiple Superior Honor Awards.
Born in Palo Alto, California in 1964, Cohen grew up there and in Laguna Beach, California. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in politics and a certificate in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1985 and attended Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service Program in 1986.