Joseph A Kéchichian is a Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the CEO of Kéchichian & Associates, LLC, a consulting partnership that provides analysis on the Arabian/Persian Gulf region, specializing in the domestic and regional concerns of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Yemen.  He was a Senior Writer with the Dubai-based Gulf News for two decades (1996-2017) and served as the Honorary Consul of the Sultanate of Oman in Los Angeles, California between 2006 and 2011.

Dr. Kéchichian received his doctorate in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1985, where he also taught (1986-1988), and assumed the assistant deanship in international studies (1988-1989).  In the summer of 1989, he was a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University (under the U.S. State Department Title VIII Program).  Between 1990 and 1996, he labored at the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation as an Associate Political Scientist, and was a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles.  Between 1998 and 2001, he was a fellow at UCLA’s Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, where he held a Smith Richardson Foundation grant (1998-1999) to compose Succession in Saudi Arabia, (New York:  Palgrave (2001) and Beirut and London:  Dar Al Saqi, 2002, 2003 [2^nd ed] (for the Arabic translation)]. 

Dr. Kéchichian published Political Participation and Stability in the Sultanate of Oman, Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2005, Oman and the World:  The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy, Santa Monica:  RAND (1995), and edited A Century in Thirty Years:  Shaykh Zayed and the United Arab Emirates, Washington, D.C.:  The Middle East Policy Council (2000), as well as Iran, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf States, New York:  Palgrave (2001).  In 2003, he co-authored (with R. Hrair Dekmejian) The Just Prince:  A Manual of Leadership (London:  Saqi Books), which includes a full translation of the Sulwan al-Muta‘ by Muhammad Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli.

In 2008, two new volumes were published:  Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies, [Boulder, Colorado:  Lynne Rienner Publishers, and Beirut:  Riyad al-Rayyes Books, 2012—in 2 volumes for the Arabic translation], and Faysal:  Saudi Arabia’s King for All Seasons [Gainesville, Florida:  University Press of Florida and Beirut:  Dar al-‘Arabiyyah lil-Mawsu‘at, 2012].  Dr. Kéchichian authored Legal and Political Reforms in Sa‘udi Arabia, [London:  Routledge, 2012, and Beirut:  Riyad al-Rayyes Books, 2015 for the Arabic translation], and completed a companion volume to Faysal titled ‘Iffat Al Thunayan: An Arabian Queen (Brighton, Chicago, Toronto:  Sussex Academic Press, 2015).

The Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. welcomed Kéchichian as a non-resident fellow in 2009-2010 and hosted him once again in 2012-2013 to work on a new Smith Richardson Foundation funded project on the Gulf Cooperation Council, which resulted in a new book titled From Alliance to Union:  Challenges Facing Gulf Cooperation Council States in the Twenty-First Century, Brighton, Chicago, Toronto:  Sussex Academic Press (2016).  Sussex published The Attempt to Uproot Sunni-Arab Influence: A Geo-Strategic Analysis of the Western, Israeli and Iranian Quest for Domination, which includes a translation of Istihdaf Ahl al-Sunna [Targeting Sunnis], by Nabil Khalifé (2017).  His latest book is Saudi Arabia in 2030:  The Emergence of a New Leadership, Seoul, Korea:  Asan Institute for Policy Studies, August 2019.  Two forthcoming volumes will influde The Nationalist Al Sa‘ud Advisor:  Yusuf Yassin of Sa‘udi Arabia and Sacred Duty and Realistic Strategies:  Sa‘udi Policies Towards Migrants and Refugees (with Fahad Alsharif).

The author of numerous essays, his latest contributions include: “The Politics os Succession in Saudi Arabia:  A Struggle for Primogeniture,” in Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (ed.), The Changing Security Dynamics of The Persian Gulf,  (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2017) and Succession Challenges
in the Arab Gulf Monarchies, Seoul, Korea:  The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, December 2015 (in English and Korean).

Dr. Kéchichian is a frequent participant in conferences throughout the world and delivers frequent lectures to leading think-tanks and political institutions.  He is also a regular interviewee on radio and television programs, and is a frequent guest on Al Jazeera English as well as various BBC programs.  The National Public Radio affiliate in Chicago, USA, WBEZ, airs his commentaries on a regular basis too.  Dr. Kéchichian is fluent in Arabic, Armenian, English, French, Italian, Turkish, and is very slowly but surely learning some Persian and a little Korean.