Rafael L. Bardají Director of Foreign Policy, FAES
Rafael L. Bardaji (1959) graduated in Political Science and Sociology at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain. He holds a PhD in Contemporary History and specialized in Strategic Issues and Military Affairs at Oxford University, Harvard and MIT.
From 1986 till 1996 he was the Director of the "Strategic Studies Group" (GEES), a private, non-partisan institution based in Madrid which conducts research and produces analysis on international security and defense issues.
In 1996 he was appointed Senior Strategic Advisor to the Defense Minister of Spain (where amongst other things he was responsible for the Strategic Defense Review). Later on, he became National Security Advisor to the Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar.
From 2004 to 2011, he remained as the Senior Advisor to the former President of Spain, being also the Director for Foreign Policy at FAES Foundation in Madrid. In 2012 he was appointed and served as Director of the Office of Strategic Assessment in Madrid.
During his professional career, he has continuously provided consultancy work for NATO military commands, the Spanish armed forces, the Spanish intelligence service and defense contractors. He is currently an advisor to the Special Operation Forces HQ at NATO.
He is a member of the Atlantic Council of the United States Strategic Advisory Group, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, and he also belongs to the international advisory boards of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) in Massachusetts.
He was a member of the International advisory board of Repsol (2005-2006) and provides consultancy work for several companies.
He has published several books as well as articles in specialised magazines and in the press where he holds weekly columns in different newspapers.
He has been awarded the Aeronautical Merit Cross (1991) the Naval Merit Cross (2000) and the Military Merit Cross (2003).
He is married with one son. Underwater photography is his main hobby.
Bahareh Hedayat is a human rights activist who has spent over six years in an Iranian prison for "insulting" Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and for "actions against national security, propagation of falsehoods, mutiny and illegal congregation." Hedayat is the longest serving female prisoner of conscience in Iran.
