Foreign Reports and The Middle East
The Middle East, with its vast reserves of petroleum, was an obvious early focus of Foreign Reports, especially as the firm’s subscribers had substantial equity interests in oil concessions in that volatile part of the world, where Kern remained a frequent visitor to many of the key players—the Shah of Iran, Gamal Abdul Nasser of revolutionary Egypt, Crown Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, etc. Kern also maintained close relationships with the leading foreign policy actors in the Eisenhower Administration, notably Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, forging a long relationship with U.S. intelligence, both in Washington and in the Agency’s foreign “stations.”
Nathaniel Kern (also Nat Kern) joined his father at Foreign Reports in 1972 after graduating from Princeton University and attending the University of Riyadh from 1970-71 as the first non-Arab student. By the time he graduated and joined the firm, rumblings of the first full-scale “energy crisis” had begun and the role of Saudi Arabia on the world scene began to be transformed.
Within two years of Nat's joining the firm, the world of oil and the Middle East had changed dramatically, with prices skyrocketing and the volumes of crude oil being produced in Saudi Arabia growing steadily. The firm’s business branched out from providing political reporting on oil in the Middle East into also providing business development assistance to firms wishing to break into new markets in the Middle East, primarily, though not exclusively, in Saudi Arabia. The main areas the firm concentrated in were competitive bidding opportunities in the power and desalination markets. This required an understanding of the technologies, engineering and procurement issues inherent in complex projects, and Foreign Reports brought on board the necessary skilled individuals in these areas.
Nat Kern was a frequent visitor to Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, at a time when U.S.-Iraqi relations were improving, and was tasked by the U.S. government with maintaining ties with certain key Iraqi officials from 1991 onwards, at a time when the U.S. government maintained a policy of shunning any official contact with the Iraqi government.
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