Kanan Makiya

is an Iraqi academic, who gained British nationality in 1982. He is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. Although he was born in Baghdad, he left Iraq to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later founding Makiya Associates in order to design and build projects in the Middle East. As a former exile, he was a prominent member of the Iraqi opposition, a "close friend" of Ahmed Chalabi, and an influential proponent of the 2003 Iraq War.His life is documented in British journalist Nick Cohen's book What's Left.