Dennis Ross

Dennis B. Ross (born November 26, 1948) is an American diplomat and author. He served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under U.S. President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and was a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (including Iran) to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ross is currently a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank, and co-chairs the Jewish People Policy Institute think tank's board of directors.

Ross was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Belvedere, California. His Jewish mother and Catholic stepfather raised him in a non-religious atmosphere.

Ross graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1970 and did graduate work there, writing a doctoral dissertation on decision-making in the Soviet Union. He became religiously Jewish after the Six-Day War. In 2002, he co-founded the Kol Shalom synagogue in Rockville, Maryland.

During U.S. President Jimmy Carter's administration, Ross worked under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon. There he co-authored a study recommending greater U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf region "because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab–Israeli conflict." During the Reagan administration, Ross served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs in the U.S. National Security Council and Deputy Director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (1982–84).

Ross returned briefly to academia in the 1980s, serving as executive director of the University of California at Berkeley-Stanford University program on Soviet international behavior from 1984 to 1986.

In the administration of President George H. W. Bush, Ross was director of the United States State Department's Policy Planning Staff, working on U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control, and the 1991 Gulf War. He also worked with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker on convincing Arab and Israeli leaders to attend the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid, Spain.

Although Ross had worked for outgoing Republican President Bush (even assisting in his re-election effort), incoming Democratic Secretary of State Warren Christopher asked Ross to stay on for a short time to help with early Middle Eastern policy in the new administration. In the summer of 1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton named Ross Middle East envoy. He helped the Israelis and Palestinians reach the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and brokered the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron in 1997. He facilitated the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and also worked on talks between Israel and Syria.

Ross headed a team of several people in the Office of the Special Middle East Coordinator, including his deputy Aaron David Miller, Robert Malley, Jon Schwarz, Gamal Helal, and Daniel Kurtzer (until 1994). Ross, consulting his team, drew up the Clinton Parameters as a bridging solution to save the Israeli–Palestinian negotiations in December 2000.