H.E. Fareed Yasseen is Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, a posting he assumed in November 2016. He joined Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in July 2004 and previously served as head of the ministry’s Department of Policy planning, as diplomatic advisor to then-Deputy President Adel Abdul Mahdi, and prior to his posting in Washington, ambassador to France. Educated in Iraq, Switzerland, and the United States, Yasseen was trained as a physicist and conducted research at two leading universities in Europe and the United States before getting involved in political activism and human rights advocacy. He worked at U.N. agencies, in particular, the Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, where he led pioneering efforts in the use of the internet. He is a member of the American Physical Society and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In 2016, he was awarded the Robert and Joann Bendetson Public Diplomacy Award at Tufts University and was made commander of France’s National Order of the Legion of Honor.