Ignatius is of Armenian descent with ancestors from Harput, Elaz??, Turkey. His father, Paul Robert Ignatius, is a former Secretary of the Navy (1967-69), president of The Washington Post, and former president of the Air Transport Association.

Ignatius was raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended St. Albans School. He then attended Harvard College, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1973. Ignatius was awarded a Frank Knox Fellowship from Harvard University and studied at Kings College, Cambridge University, where he received a diploma in economics.

He is married to Dr. Eve Thornberg Ignatius, with whom he has three daughters.

Journalism

After completing his education, Ignatius was an editor at the Washington Monthly before moving to the Wall Street Journal, where he spent 10 years as a reporter. At the Journal, Ignatius first covered the steel industry in Pittsburgh. He then moved to Washington where he covered the Justice Department, the CIA, and the Senate. Ignatius was the Journal’s Middle East correspondent between 1980 and 1983, during which time he covered the wars in Lebanon and Iraq. He returned to Washington in 1984, becoming the Journal's chief diplomatic correspondent. In 1985 he received the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting.

In 1986, Ignatius left the Journal for the Washington Post. From 1986 to 1990, he was the editor of the “Outlook” section of the Post . From 1990 to 1992 he was the paper’s foreign editor, and oversaw the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. From 1993 to 1999, he served as the Post’s assistant managing editor in charge of business news. In 1999, he began writing a twice-weekly column in the Post on global politics, economics and international affairs.

In 2000, he became the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He returned to the Post in 2002 when the Post sold its interest in the Herald Tribune. Ignatius continued to write his column once a week during his tenure at the Herald Tribune, resuming twice-weekly columns after his return to the Post. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group. The column won the 2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary and a 2004 Edward Weintal Prize. In writing his column, Ignatius frequently travels to the Middle East and interviews leaders such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese military organization Hezbollah.

Ignatius’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Talk Magazine and The Washington Monthly.

In April 2010, Ignatius came out in support of the Value added tax.

Novels

In addition to his career as a journalist, Ignatius is also a successful novelist. He has written six novels in the suspense/espionage fiction genre, which draw on his experience and interest in foreign affairs and his knowledge of intelligence operations. Reviewers have compared Ignatius to classic spy novelists such as Graham Greene. Ignatius’s novels have also been praised for their realism; his first novel, Agents of Innocence, was at one point described by the CIA on its website as "a novel but not fiction." His 1999 novel The Sun King, a re-working of The Great Gatsby set in late-20th-century Washington, is his only departure from the espionage genre.

His 2007 novel Body of Lies was adapted into a film by director Ridley Scott. It starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has acquired the rights to Ignatius’s most recent novel, The Increment.

Other

In 2006, he wrote a foreword to the American edition of Moazzam Begg’s Enemy Combatant, a book about the author’s experiences as a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and Ignatius published America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy, a book that collected conversations, moderated by Ignatius, between Brzezinski and Scowcroft. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of 2008.

Ignatius has been trustee of the German Marshall Fund since 2000. He is a member of the Council of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and has been a director of its U.S. affiliate since 2006. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1984. From 1984 to 1990, he was a member of the Governing Board of St. Albans School.

2009 Davos incident

At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ignatius moderated a discussion including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Israeli President Shimon Peres, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. As the December '08-January '09 conflict in Gaza was still fresh in memory, the tone of the discussion was lively. Ignatius gave the Israeli President the final 25 minutes to speak. Erdo?an objected to Peres' tone and raised voice during the Israeli President's impassioned defense of his nation's actions. Ignatius gave Erdo?an a minute to respond, and when Erdo?an went over his allocated minute, Ignatius repeatedly cut the Turkish Prime Minister off, telling him and the audience that they were out of time and that they had to get to a dinner. Erdo?an seemed visibly frustrated as he said to the President of Israel, "When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill." Ignatius put his arm on Erdo?an's shoulder and kept telling him that his time was up. Erdo?an then gathered his papers and said, "I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak." Erdo?an then got up from his chair and walked off the stage while the other discussion panelists were still seated, but Amr Moussa stood up to shake his hand as he left. At that point the discussion ended.

Five minutes after the discussion ended, Peres called Erdo?an to apologize for any misunderstanding. Erdo?an later told reporters that he was not upset with Peres, rather he was upset with Ignatius for failing to moderate the discussion impartially, by giving Peres 25 minutes to speak while earlier giving Erdo?an only 12 minutes and then just another minute to respond to Peres. Erdo?an returned to Istanbul a day later to a hero's welcome at the airport.

Writing about the incident, Ignatius said that he found himself “in the middle of a fight where there was no longer a middle.” Caught in the Middle Because the Israel-Palestinian conflict provokes such heated emotions on both sides of the debate, Ignatius concluded, it was impossible for anyone to be seen as an impartial mediator. Ignatius wrote that his experience elucidated a larger truth about failure of the United States’ attempt to serve as an impartial mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “American leaders must give up the notion that they can transform the Middle East and its culture through military force,” Ignatius wrote, and instead “get out of the elusive middle, step across the threshold of anger, and sit down and talk” with the Middle Eastern leaders.