Edmund Fitton-Brown
Edmund Fitton-Brown is a former British diplomat, counterterrorism specialist, and one of the leading British voices on terrorism, Iran, proxy warfare, and Middle East security. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where his work focuses on Arabian Peninsula issues, terrorism, and its enablers. He is also a Senior Advisor at the Counter Extremism Project and a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.
Edmund joined the UK Foreign Service in 1984 and served in a range of Middle Eastern and European postings, including Finland, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates. His diplomatic career culminated in his appointment as British Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017, a period that coincided with the intensification of Yemen’s civil war and the growing international focus on the Houthis, Iran’s regional networks, and the wider security architecture of the Arabian Peninsula.
After leaving the Foreign Service, Edmund joined the United Nations in 2017 as an Expert with the UN Security Council’s ISIL, al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Team. In January 2018, he became Coordinator of the team, a position he held until July 2022. In that role, he led work on sanctions, terrorist financing, and global threat assessment relating to ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, and became widely recognised as one of the UN’s principal authorities on the global threat posed by ISIL and al-Qaeda.
His expertise spans international counterterrorism, Middle East security, jihadist movements, terrorist financing, Iran and its proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. He has written and commented widely across specialist and mainstream media, including FDD’s Long War Journal, CTC Sentinel, the BBC, The Times, The Telegraph, Sky News, Times Radio, LBC, i24 News, and several Arabic-language channels. He also co-hosts CounterPod and appears regularly in discussions on terrorism, extremism, regional security, and state-backed threats.
Edmund holds a BA and MA in History from Cambridge University and speaks Arabic, Finnish, French, and Italian.
