From 2009 to 2013, he served as an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining the NYU faculty, Bazzi was the Middle East bureau chief at Newsday from 2003 to 2007. He established Newsday bureaus in Baghdad and Beirut, and he was the lead writer on the Iraq war and its aftermath. He has written extensively about regional politics, Shiite-Sunni conflicts, and militant Islam. He also covered the 2000 Palestinian uprising, the war in Afghanistan, and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. His essays and commentaries on the Middle East have appeared in The New York Times, London Review of Books, Boston Review, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and other publications.