Richard Brennan is a Senior Political Scientist at RAND and career Army officer with extensive expertise relating to national security policy regarding Iraq, Iran and the broader Middle-East. From 2006 through 2011 he served as a deployed RAND analyst supporting the U.S. military in various positions to include the RAND team leader within the Joint Interagency Task Force - Iraq, Director of the Checkmate Team, and Senior Advisor to the USF-I Director of Operations (J3) where he worked on broad range of operational and strategic issues supporting the mission. During the last two years of the operation he participated in much of the planning efforts related to the transition and was an eyewitness to the final operational maneuver of forces out of Iraq.