nephew of Dr. Thoraya Obaid, the former United Nations Undersecretary for Population Affairs and former executive director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Education IB – Humanities; International School of Geneva, 1982–1993. BS – International Relations; Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, 1994–1996. MPP – International Security & Political Economy; John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, 1996–1998. PhD – Political Science (Security Studies) at MIT Center for International Studies; Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000–2001 (coursework completed). MA – War Studies; Department of War Studies at King's College London, 2010–2011. PhD – War Studies; Department of War Studies at King’s College London, 2011–2013. During Obaid’s time at Harvard Kennedy School, he studied under American international relations theorists Graham Allison and Joseph Nye. Professor Nye served as the academic mentor and supervisor to Obaid while he wrote a controversial master’s thesis on US-Saudi relations. Although Obaid was a student of Professor Nye, he subscribes to the neorealism school of thought in international relations theory and has been heavily influenced by eminent theorists Kenneth Waltz of Columbia University, Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, and Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera of MIT. Career Public career Obaid started his public career in February 2003 by being named, alongside murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as a Special Advisor for Strategic Communications to the Saudi Ambassador to the UK and then to the US. Based between London and Washington DC, he held the position until December 2006. Obaid is widely considered to having been an intimate friend of Khashoggi after working closely together for over fifteen years. They had a significant falling out several months before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul because, according to former French intelligence officials, Obaid discovered that Khashoggi was involved in several covert political initiatives to attempt to undermine Saudi domestic security. In December 2006, Obaid was fired from the staff of Prince Turki Al Faisal, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, for publishing an opinion piece in The Washington Post "contending that 'one of the first consequences' of an American pullout of Iraq would 'be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.'" The article also suggested that the Kingdom could cut oil prices in half, which "would be devastating to Iran." While the Saudi government disavowed the piece and Prince