John Tirman (December 13, 1949 – August 19, 2022) was an American political theorist. From 2004, Tirman was executive director and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies. There he led the Persian Gulf Initiative, which conducted work on Iraq war mortality and U.S. and Iran relations, as well as other projects. He was the author or coauthor of 13 books on international affairs, many of them exploring and advocating the “human security” paradigm in global affairs, and was a frequent contributor to AlterNet, The Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe.