Emanuele Ottolenghi

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a regular contributor with Commentary Magazine, and the former executive director of The Transatlantic Institute (appointed 28 August 2006), 'an American Jewish Committee initiative of international diplomacy'. He has written op-eds for the National Review, New York Sun, Jerusalem Post (regular contributor), the Guardian, among others, most of which are focused on Israel, and its policy initiatives.



Basic biography
Emanuele Ottolenghi was born in 1969 in Bologna, Italy, and he speaks English, French, Hebrew and Italian. He graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in Political Science. He lived for five years in Israel, where he worked for the Israel Democracy Institute, and obtained a PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Around 2003, he taught Israeli politics at Oxford University where he was the Leone Ginzburg Fellow in Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford. He was also a columnist for Il Foglio. He has held positions at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., as well as the University of New South Wales, in Australia.

Editorials
From the Magna Carta Foundation: "He works as a freelance consultant on Israeli politics and Middle East issues; he regularly contributes Op-Eds to Israel’s English daily The Jerusalem Post, the Italian Daily Il Foglio and occasionally to the Italian daily syndicate Il Quotidiano Nazionale (a conglomerate of Il Giorno, Il Resto del Carlino , and La Nazione ); Fragments of Zion , his monthly column in Rome’s Jewish magazine Shalom , is dedicated to Zionist thinkers and the relevance of their work to present day Israel. He has published Op-Eds in several newspapers on Israel and the Middle East topics (The Guardian, The Jerusalem Report, The Australian Financial Review and Newsday among others) and regularly appears on news radio and TV programs."

The Magna Carta Foundation is an Italian neoconservative think tank inspired by the American tradition.

Target Iran
Ottolenghi is a leading voice in the neoconservative campaign against Iran, and a Google search indicates that he publishes several articles per month against Iran. Ottolenghi lobbies parliamentarians to obtain support in favor of an attack or sanctions against Iran. He has appeared twice at the UK House of Commons invited by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), and on both occasions he pushed for an attack/sanctions against Iran. His first HJS event coincided with the NIE findings showing that American intelligence analysts had a consensus opinion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. Ottolenghi spent much time suggesting that the NIE findings were not relevant or were unreliable.

Over the past five years Ottolenghi has tried to establish himself as an expert on Iran, with a view to encouraging a more belligerent policy toward the Islamic Republic. Ottolenghi is now a member of The Iran Energy Project, an initiative of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has argued for the economic strangulation of Iran, and in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, he makes the case that the bar of evidence must be set lower to blacklist companies suspected of doing business with Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He writes:
 * If a business thought to be IRGC-related is publicly identified, government agencies can better investigate its identity and operations. This may then lead to a designation by one or more Western governments. Even if a business is not designated as IRGC-affiliated, however, the mere act of identification is useful.

Drum beating: articles about Iran
Many of the articles below appear in multiple journals. Even if it appears in the WSJ, it is also likely to be posted on The National Post (Canada), etc. These articles are efficiently syndicated. Only one source is provided below. This is not an exhaustive list.

2012

 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Sorry Baroness Ashton, Iran won't concede in Baghdad, Jewish Chronicle, 24 May 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran?, FDD talk at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, 26 April 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Diplomacy will dampen Iran war talk - for now, Reuters, 16 April 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran regime change only hope, NZ Herald, 3 April 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi and Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, Iran's march for "martyrs" to Jerusalem, The Commentator, 31 March 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran is not Iraq, and past mistakes should not cloud our judgment, The Age, 30 March 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Israel vs Iran - How would a war unfold?, ABC, 12 March 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, For America, it's all about timing. Can Israel afford it?, JC.com, 8 March 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Only tough sanctions will stop Iran, NYT, 6 March 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Can we talk our way out? Unlikely, The JC.com, 23 February 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Republicans have their own take on Israel policy, Jewish Chronicle, 2 February 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Good-natured liberals become Iran apologists, Jewish Chronicle, 19 January 2012.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Embargo That Can't Wait, WSJ, 17 January 2012. (Article also appeared in the Times of India)
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, A Ph.D. in Torture: Why is Rafsanjani’s son studying at Oxford?, The Weekly Standard, Vol 17, No. 16, 2 January 2012.

2011

 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran and the Myth of the Pro-Regime Backlash: A U.S. military strike is just as likely to accelerate internal regime change as it is to hinder it, WSJ, 22 December 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi interviewed by Walter Bingham, Special Programme on Iran, Israel National News, 7 December 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Storming of the British Embassy in Tehran will only damage the regime, Jewish Chronicle, 1 December 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi and Claudia Rosett, The Big Business Behind Iran's Proliferation, Wall Street Journal, 1 December 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, What can stop Iran now? Nothing much, Jewish Chronicle, 24 November 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran Take One, J-Wire, 11 November 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran: No more doubts, Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 2011
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iranian nuclear details should’ve been released years ago, National Post, 10 November 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Analysis: Iran is trying to start a war, Jewish Chronicle, 19 October 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran shows its true colours, National Post, 14 October 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, When Tehran Attacks, Wall Street Journal, 13 October 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Turkey taking on Iran? Not out of question, Jewish Chronicle, 11 October 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran's making a bomb, all else is a lie, Jewish Chronicle, 15 September 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Economic Sanctions On Iran Haven't Been Enough, Forbes, 7 September 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, A still-open nuclear file, Haaretz, 26 August 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Reality of Iran’s Threat, People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, 6 August 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 'Moderate', Wall Street Journal, 2 August 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Dangers Of Doing Business With Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Forbes, 15 June 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, A nuclear armed Iran could be the price of the Libya campaign, The Commentator, 7 June 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran cashes in with Clayton's war on drugs, The Australian, 30 May 2011.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran’s Profitable War on Drugs, Commentary, 17 May 2011.

2010

 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran's Righteous Martyrs, WSJ, 5 January 2010.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran? Check the Source First, Commentary, 17 March 2010.

2009

 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, How Far Along Is Iran on the Bomb?, Commentary, 3 August 2009

Affiliations

 * TransAtlantic Institute – Executive Director (appointed 28 August 2006 - 2009).
 * American Jewish Committee
 * American Enterprise Institute
 * Foundation for the Defense of Democracies - Senior Fellow
 * Iran Energy Project - Research Analyst
 * Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
 * Michael Ledeen (friends)
 * OpenDemocracy – regular contributor
 * Labour Friends of Israel
 * Magna Carta Foundation
 * Commentary Magazine - blogger

Contact

 * Executive Director, Transatlantic Institute
 * Phone: +32 2 500 72 80
 * E-mail: ottolenghie AT transatlanticinstitute.org

Until 2006 Ottolenghi maintained his own website www.emanueleottolenghi.com, but since he became director of the TransAtlantic institute it has been removed. The last version of it is available in the Internet Archive of 24 August 2006.

Publications

 * Electoral Reform in Israel, Palgrave, due 2006.
 * Anatol Lieven, right or wrong?, OpenDemocracy, 20 October 2004. (In this article, Ottolenghi provides a very good summary of his views -- and positions him firmly in the neocon or ziocon corner).
 * FFD profile and list of articles, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, accessed 23 October 2010.
 * Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran: The Looming Crisis, November 2010, Profile Books (ISBN 9781846684234).

Resources

 * PIWP listing of articles by or about Ottolenghi can be found here (click on button).
 * Rightweb Emanuele Ottolenghi
 * FORA TV, a video of Ottolenghi talking about his book "Under a Mushroom Cloud: Europe, Iran and the Bomb" Under a Mushroom Cloud, Accessed 14-July-2009
 * Gary Sick, The Ineptitude of Emanuele Ottolenghi, Gary's Choices: blog, 24 April 2012.
 * Allan Lee interviews E. Ottolenghi, Why peaceful solutions to Middle East unrest are so hard to find, theDove Radio (New Zealand), 25 April 2012.