ABOUT KIM GHATTAS

I am an author and analyst with more than twenty years of experience in print and broadcast media, covering the Middle East, international affairs and US foreign policy. I am a contributing editor for the Financial Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine. In 2024, I was a Distinguished Fellow at Columbia’s Institute for Global Politics and in 2026, I was a visiting professor at Dartmouth College where I taught journalism and government classes. In 2024, the Washington Post listed me among the Top 50 Next Thought leaders.

In October 2026, Henry Holt will be publishing my third book in the US, The Best Kind of American- A True Story of Murder, War, and America’s Undoing in the Middle East. It will be published by Bloomsbury in the UK. It will also be translated into Dutch, Italian, Korean and Polish, with more to come. I began researching this book in 2022—it tells the story of what happened when then 1979 Iranian revolution clashed with with the 1982 Israel invasion of Lebanon and how the US-Iran enmity culminates with Operation Epic Fury in 2026. At the heart of the narrative is a murder mystery and the tale of unsung heroes in Lebanon.

In 2020, I published Black Wave about the Saudi-Iran rivalry and its social, cultural impact across four decades and seven countries from 1979 onwards. Black Wave was a NYT 100 notable book of 2020. I wrote my first book in 2013: The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power became a New York Times best seller. The book includes personal reflections about being a child in war-torn Lebanon, growing up with questions about American power. 

I was born and raised in Beirut, on the front lines of the Lebanese civil war. Searching for answers about the chaos around me is what made me want to become a journalist at the age of 13. 

I started my journalism career in 1998, as an intern in Beirut at the local English-language newspaper The Daily Star. Print was my first love. Within a couple of years, I was reporting for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant as well as the Financial Times and then the BBC. I spent my time on the road covering the Middle East: reporting from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and of course Lebanon. In 2006, my BBC colleagues and I covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah and we won an Emmy for international news coverage. 

In 2008, I left my posting in Beirut, the city that made me a journalist, to become the BBC's State Department correspondent based in Washington.  For six years, I travelled regularly with Secretaries of State: Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. I was recognized by publications like Monocle for my State Department reporting. 

My work has also been published in The Daily Beast, The New York Times, TIME, Foreign Policy and The Washington Post. I’m a regular guest on CNN, NPR, and MSNBC, among others.

I served nine years on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut, my alma mater and a beacon of intellectual engagement in the Middle East. I am also on the board directors of the Global Center for Pluralism and the advisory board of the Atlas for Impunity. For a few years, I also chaired the board of directors for ARIJ, an organization dedicated to training and supporting investigative journalists in the Arab world.

On this website, you’ll find all my recent work, including my writings, my books and the podcast, as well as a small selection of my favorite articles and reports from my two decades as a journalist, covering the Middle East and American foreign policy.