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.

"Using the Iraqi archives for the first time, Helfont provides deep insights into how Saddam Hussein's Ba'thist regime sought to undermine America's post-Cold War order. Far from being a marginal actor on the global stage, Iraq's efforts inevitably placed it in the crosshairs of the George W. Bush administration and help explain why the disastrous invasion of Iraq became a White House obsession. The book successfully shifts our focus from great power politics to illustrate how relatively small countries can play important roles in world affairs. The focus on Iraq also helps explain wider transformations in international politics, and further emphasizes the central role of the Middle East over the last three decades." -- Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

"Helfont has written the essential book about Iraqi influence operations abroad during the leadership tenure of Saddam Hussein. While most existing studies have focused on Iraq's domestic political scene, Helfont gives us a window into Iraqi activities abroad, including the conditions under which the regime succeeded or failed in achieving its foreign policy objectives." -- Lisa Blaydes, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

"Saddam Hussein's regime placed a high priority on undermining support for international sanctions on Iraq after 1991. Drawing on the vast archive of internal Ba'thist documents captured after the 2003 invasion, Samuel Helfont shows in gripping detail how the Iraqi regime sought to exploit global outrage over the humanitarian crisis. His account digs deep to document how Iraq attempted to manipulate well-intentioned civil society activists, journalists, politicians, and UN officials in a global campaign of information warfare and political manipulation." -- Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

"Samuel Helfont, a brilliant Arabist with extensive experience on the ground, does indeed offer 'profound and unprecedented insights into Iraq's foreign policy.'ÂHis authoritative account reveals how the shrewd Âmaneuvers of Saddam Hussein's global Ba'thist network vexed the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations' efforts to forge a 'new world order' following the 1991 Gulf War. A chilling read." -- Walter A. McDougall, Professor of History and International Relations, University of Pennsylvania