James H. Noyes is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in Middle East Affairs. He is currently researching the regional security implications of a changing U.S. military posture in Iraq.

He was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near Eastern, African, and South Asian Affairs (international security affairs) in Washington, D.C., from 1970 through 1976.

Noyes's recent work includes (1) “Prospects for U.S.-Iran Talks,” Newsweek Japan, June 1, 2007, (2) “Iran’s Nuclear Program: Impact on the Security of the GCC” in Iran’s Nuclear Program: Realities and Repercussions (Abu Dhabi, UAE: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2006), (3) The U.S. War on Terrorism: Impacts on U.S.-Arab Relations, (also by the Emirates Center, 2003), (4) online classes 2002 and 2003 in the Oxford, Yale, Stanford Iraq Forum on the AllLearn internet alumni program; (5) “Threats to U.S. Security Interests in Southwest Asia,” prepared for the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute, June 2001; (6) "Fallacies, Smoke, and Pipe Dreams: Forcing Change in Iran and Iraq," Middle East Policy (June 2000).

His earlier publications include "Does Washington Really Support Israel?” Foreign Policy, June 1997. He coedited, with M .E. Ahrari, The Persian Gulf after the Cold War (New York: Praeger, 1993) and wrote the chapter "American Perceptions of Iranian Threats to Gulf Security" in The Gulf and International Security: The 1980s and Beyond (London: Macmillan Press, 1989). Noyes's volume The Clouded Lens: Persian Gulf Security and U.S. Policy (Hoover Institution Press, 1979; revised edition, 1982) has been widely cited for its in-depth analysis of U.S. strategic interests in Southwest Asia.

Noyes was a visiting senior fellow at the Institute of International Studies, UC-Berkeley, from 1977 to 1978, when he joined the Hoover Institution. He was a representative for the Asia Foundation in Colombo, Sri Lanka, during 1965–68 and director for Syria for AMIDEAST in Damascus, Syria, from 1956 through 1958. He received a Yale B.A. in 1950, was a special student at Allahabad University, India, 1951–52, and received an M.A. in political science from UC-Berkeley in 1954.