Gary Sick

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iran relations. He is executive director of Gulf/2000, an international research and documentation project on political, economic, and security issues in the Persian Gulf at Columbia University.

9/11: watching the planes hit

Gary Sick Sep 10, 2026

Gary Sick, a retired US Navy captain, was the principal White House aide for Persian Gulf affairs from 1976 to 1981, a period which included the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. More recently he has been Professor and Senior…

The long shadow of Tehran: Why Washington is still flying blind

Gary Sick May 8, 2026

In my years serving on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, I learned a difficult truth: the United States has a recurring tendency to mistake activity for strategy. Whether we are imposing "maximum…

Revolution in Iran?

Gary Sick Oct 12, 2022

Since at least 2009 and the “Green Revolution,” the young and middle-class population of Iran has repeatedly demonstrated its disgust with the aging clerical rulers who govern their lives. They march in the streets at risk of everything to…

Now is the time for a US foreign policy overhaul

Gary Sick Aug 19, 2021

The Biden administration missed its chance to undertake a fundamental reevaluation of US Middle East policy in its early honeymoon period. There were urgent domestic priorities, there was a world of repair work to be done on U.S. alliances,…