Michael P. Pregent is executive director of Veterans Against the Deal, a new group formed to oppose the Iran deal.  Pregent served for 20 years in the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions as a Middle East intelligence officer, and seven years in the Defense Intelligence Agency as an expert on Iranian influence in Iraq. Pregent has served in three wars: the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  In 2001 Pregent was a counter-insurgency intelligence officer at CENTCOM. From 2002-2003 he was a company commander in Afghanistan. From 2005-2006, he was embedded with the Peshmerga in Mosul, Iraq. From 2007-2010 he was based at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad working on Iranian malign influence in Iraq for Generals Odierno and Petraeus, and serving as an advisor to Iraq’s security and intelligence services. From 2011-2013 he was an extremism and foreign fighter analyst at CENTCOM.  Pregent holds a Masters in Strategic Public Relations from The George Washington University and is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect.  He has written for Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the Long War Journal, Daily Beast, CNN, and Business Insider, and has appeared on the BBC, CNN, and Fox News.

The Honorable Peter Hoekstra stands among the few former U.S. Congressmen with experience as a Fortune 500 business executive. Pete brings a unique blend of expertise and perspective to the intersection of global markets and public policy. His specialties include national security, international relations, countering global Islamist terror and cyber security. Pete is active in a number of areas. He serves as the Shillman Senior Fellow at the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), the world’s most comprehensive data center on radical Islamist terror. Pete also serves on the Board of Directors of Gentex, Inc. and West Michigan Community Bank, as well as the Advisory Boards of Newsmax Media, Inc. and TransCertain.  Pete served in Congress for 18 years, representing Michigan’s Second Congressional District from 1993 to 2011. Prior to his election, he worked for 15 years at office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller Inc., where he rose through the ranks to become Vice President of Marketing.  Congressional leadership appointed Pete as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 through January 2007, and as the top Republican on the Committee until January 2011. He was responsible for leading Congressional oversight of U.S. Intelligence during its modernization to confront the threats of the 21st Century such as global Islamist terror and cyber warfare, including restructuring the intelligence community with landmark legislation following the 9-11 Commission report.

Emilio Dabul’s cultural background and life experience make him uniquely suited to be a commentator on Middle East issues and culture. He is of Syrian heritage on his father’s side, English and Irish on his mother’s. His religious upbringing included the basic tenets of Islam as well as Christianity. This was the beginning of his journey into the varieties of religious and political experience, which continues up to the present day. His wife, who is Jewish, has family in Israel and a cousin who is a female rabbi in Jerusalem. Across the border in Damascus, Dabul has an uncle who was an assistant to the first President Assad.  Dabul’s opinion pieces have appeared in various national newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, the New York Daily News, and have confronted Islamist terrorists and addressed the need for true dialogue on a host of Middle East related issues. He runs his own PR firm and has media trained many clients as well as appeared many times himself on national radio and TV broadcasts.