Jake Sullivan is our Montgomery Fellow for the winter term 2019. Jake is a renowned American policymaker and analyst for international affairs. He served as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under Secretary Hilary Clinton, a job he took at the age of thirty-four (Time Magazine included him in its “40 under 40” list of rising stars in American politics). Jake Sullivan was also Hilary Clinton's top foreign policy adviser during the 2016 Presidential election.
Among his major diplomatic achievements are the opening to Iran that led to the negotiation of the Iran nuclear pact. In November 2013, it had been reported that officials in the Obama administration, including Jake Sullivan, had secretly met with their Iranian counterparts to inquire the feasibility of an agreement over the Iranian nuclear program, which ultimately led to the Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. The Joint Plan of Action had been signed by Iran and the five Security Council Members of the United Nations – U.S.A., Russia, China, France, Great Britain, plus Germany – on November 24, 2013. Apart from being a policymaker and political advisor, Jake Sullivan is also a prolific writer on US international affairs. I addition to his commentaries at CNN, his writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Sullivan’s more recent work focuses on the current and future role of the Democratic Party in the United States as well as US foreign policy towards Iran and North Korea.