Jonathan Steele (journalist)

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Jonathan Steele (born 15 February 1941) is a British journalist and author who has spent decades reporting international affairs. He studied at King's College, Cambridge (BA) and Yale University (MA). As a student, he joined civil rights work in the United States, taking part in Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

Steele began his long career with The Guardian in 1965. He held major foreign posts, including Washington Bureau Chief (1975–1979), Foreign News Editor (1979–1982), Chief Foreign Correspondent (1982–1988), and Moscow Bureau Chief (1988–1994). He reported on the El Salvador civil war, Nicaragua, and the 1983 US invasion of Grenada. After returning to London in 1994, he covered the Kosovo War and the fall of Slobodan Milosević, and later the Middle East after 2001. He spent three years in Baghdad reporting on the 2003 Iraq invasion and its aftermath, which he explored in his 2008 book Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq.

Steele also covered the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war and the Syrian conflict after 2011, making frequent trips to Damascus. He has reported from Afghanistan since 1981, including the Taliban era and the 2001 defeat of the regime. His book Ghosts of Afghanistan: the Haunted Battleground surveys thirty years of Afghan history. He worked as a columnist for The Guardian on international affairs and contributed to discussions surrounding WikiLeaks publications.

He has been a familiar voice on the BBC and has written for the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books. From 2014 to 2017 he served as chief reporter for the Middle East Eye website. In 2012 he wrote about Bashar al-Assad, noting that while polls showed support, many Syrians wanted free elections. In 2018 he urged anti-Assad rebels to surrender.

With Ruth First and Christabel Gurney, he co-authored a critical examination of foreign capital and apartheid in South Africa, arguing for sanctions and disinvestment rather than reform from within. He has written about East Germany and the Soviet Union, earning praise from reviewers and peers for his clear, well-researched history.

Steele has received numerous awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism Special Award (2006), International Reporter of the Year (1981, 1991), Scoop of the Year (1991) for interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev during the August coup, Amnesty International’s foreign reporting award (1998), and the James Cameron Award (1998). He lives in London with his wife Ruth and their two children.