Scott Peterson covers the Middle East for the Monitor from London, with a special focus on Iran, Iraq, and Syria. A well-traveled and experienced foreign correspondent who is also a photographer for Getty Images in New York, he has reported and photographed conflict and powerful human narratives across three continents for more than two decades.
Scott first joined the Monitor in 1996 as the Middle East correspondent, based in Amman, Jordan, then became the Moscow bureau chief. During those years, his coverage stretched from Algiers to Beirut to Tehran, later extending to Russia and Central Asia. In Afghanistan he traveled with the Taliban in 1999, and later was witness to their collapse when Kabul fell in 2001.
He has made 30 visits to Iran, which form the backbone of his book "Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran – A Journey Behind the Headlines” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He has also frequently reported from Iraq, first during the 1991 Kurdish uprising, when he secretly crossed the border from Turkey, before being forced to flee across the mountains with more than a million Kurds – and a handful of fellow journalists – when Saddam Hussein’s armed forces crushed the resistance.
Since 1997, he has traveled often to Baghdad, except for a two-year period when he was blacklisted by the former regime. He was embedded for one month with US Marines during their November 2004 assault on Fallujah. Prior to joining the Monitor, Scott covered the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Africa, and the Balkans for The Telegraph (London) and was based in Cyprus; Nairobi, Kenya; and Zagreb, Croatia.
Scott is the author of “Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda” (Routledge, 2000), about his work in war zones in Africa during six years in the 1990s. It is based on more than 50 trips to Somalia and long forays into Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
You can read more about Scott's work on his website.
Stories by Scott Peterson
- The Istanbul mayor’s arrest, and rise of a ‘new model’ of Turkish autocracy
- What role for Kurds in the ‘new’ Syria? They’re getting mixed messages.
- Amid war’s ruins, a family grapples with young son’s hunger to learn
- Once-occupied Ukraine towns try to stay defiant amid fear over Russia gains
- Ukraine is exhausted. But it’s still determined to resist Russia.
- View all
