Michael Scott Doran (born April 25, 1962) is an American analyst of the international politics of the Middle East.
He was appointed to the National Security Council and was also deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy at the U.S. Department of Defense under the George W. Bush administration.
Before returning to academia, he was appointed deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy at the U.S. Department of Defense in April 2007 after being the senior director for Near East and North African affairs at the National Security Council from 2005 to 2007.
Doran has been criticized in The American Conservative as "one of the leading hawkish cheerleaders for Azerbaijan" and encouraging anti-Armenian sentiment.
"[6] Casey Michel, head of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, has criticized Doran's assertion that Azerbaijan under dictator Ilham Aliyev has become a "bastion of diversity and tolerance", writing that that it was true "in the same way that, say, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, and Mobutu's Zaire were also 'bastions of diversity and tolerance.