Sheikh. Nawaf Bin Mubarak Al-Thani

Brigadier General. Sheikh. Nawaf Bin Mubarak Al-Thani is the Founder and President of the Council on International Mediation (CIM), a non-governmental, non-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C., and Doha dedicated to advancing mediation, peacebuilding, and de-escalatory diplomacy across regions of conflict.

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A strategist and former senior defense official of the State of Qatar, Al-Thani has worked at the intersection of diplomacy, defense intelligence, strategic communications, and humanitarian engagement for nearly three decades. He served as Qatar’s Senior Defense Official and Defense Attaché to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, where he played a central role in strengthening defense cooperation and advancing dialogue on regional stability, crisis management, and strategic de-escalation.

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Earlier in his career, he served as Director of Defense Intelligence Operations at the Ministry of Defense in Doha, and later as Director of Defense Communication and Qatar’s first-ever spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense and the Qatar Armed Forces. In these roles, he contributed to the development of Qatar’s modern defense and communications architecture and operated at the intersection of policy, military engagement, and mediation during major regional and international crises.

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Al-Thani is a coalition veteran whose field experience spans multiple multinational operations, including Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Odyssey Dawn, and NATO’s Operation Unified Protector in Libya. His service also includes work in fragile and conflict-affected environments across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, including Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In 2012, he served on the Arab League’s humanitarian observer mission to Syria, an experience that deepened his focus on conflict diplomacy, post-conflict stabilization, and the human consequences of war.

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His professional focus centers on mediation, defense diplomacy, post-conflict reconstruction, and small-state strategy, with particular emphasis on de-escalation, humanitarian diplomacy, and the relationship between military institutions and political resolution in contemporary conflicts.

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Al-Thani serves on the Advisory Committee of Georgetown University’s Small States Research Program in Qatar, is a Distinguished International Defense Affairs Fellow at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington, D.C., and is a Board Member of the Gulf International Forum in Washington, D.C. He is also a columnist, speaker, and commentator on mediation, regional security, political narrative, and post-war reconstruction.

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He holds an LL.B from Qatar University and an M.Res in Defense Studies from King’s College London, and is a graduate of both the Ahmed Bin Mohammed Military Academy and the Joaan Bin Jassim Academy for Defense Studies, where he earned distinction and honors respectively.