Satoshi Ikeuchi is a professor of Religion and Global Security at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) of the University of Tokyo. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2009 and Visiting Fellow at the Clare Hall University of Cambridge in 2010. He specializes in Middle East Politics and Arab-Islamic Thought. His publications include Islamukoku-no Shogeki (The Shock of the Islamic State) published in 2015 which was a nation-wide best selling book in Japan and awarded several prizes. He also published literary and critical essays in various journals and compiled them into a book Shomotsu-no Ummei (The Fate of Books) which was award Mainichi Book Review Prize in 2006.

Jon Alterman is a senior vice president, holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and is director of the Middle East Program at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS in 2002, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. He also previously served as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission). In addition to his policy work, he often teaches Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the George Washington University.

Karen Young is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on the political economy of the Middle East, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (best known as the GCC), and the Arabian Peninsula. She concurrently teaches courses on the international relations and economy of the Middle East at George Washington University and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.