Samuel Helfont is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Policy in the Naval War College program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on international history and politics in the Middle East, especially Iraq and the Iraq Wars. He maintains affiliations with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. He is the author of Compulsion in
Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam, and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018). His work has also been published by Foreign Affairs, The International History Review, The Middle East Journal, Texas National Security Review, Orbis, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The American Interest, and
War on the Rocks, among other outlets. Helfont served as an intelligence officer in the US Navy and Navy Reserve. An Iraq War veteran, he completed deployments both afloat and ashore in the Middle East. He also served on
Middle Eastern and counterterrorism missions at various American intelligence agencies.
