Jean-Loup Samaan is a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and the Institut Montaigne.
Prior to that, Samaan was a policy analyst at the Directorate for Strategic Affairs of the French Ministry of Defense (2008-2011), research advisor at the NATO Defense College (2011-2016), and associate professor in strategic studies at the UAE National Defense College (2016-2021).
His most recent book, New Military Strategies in the Gulf, was published by I.B. Tauris in August 2023 and looks at the evolving defense policies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Samaan has authored five other books and several articles and monographs for various international academic and policy journals such as Survival, Orbis, Comparative Strategy, Parameters, the Middle East Journal, and The International Spectator.
Samaan regularly conducts radio, television, and print interviews, including CNN, Bloomberg, BBC News, France 24, Euronews, and Financial Times. His comments have also appeared in numerous publications, including War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, Al Monitor, The National Interest.
He also gives lectures to civilian and military audiences in various countries and has been providing expertise to governments, international organisations as well as private companies.
Dr. Samaan is a former student of Arabic and Hebrew at the French Institute of Oriental Languages. He graduated from the Institute for Political Studies in Grenoble, and he holds a Ph.D. in political science (2009) from the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne as well as an accreditation to supervise research (2017) from the doctoral school of Sciences Po, Paris.
Jean-Loup Samaan 