Carmela Lutmar is Senior Lecturer in the Division of International Relations in the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel, and Adjunct Lecturer at New York University, USA. Her research interests include leadership, regime changes, mediation in civil wars, and postwar governance in war torn societies. Ziv Rubinovitz is Research Fellow at the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy at the University of Haifa, Israel, and Research Coordinator of the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center, the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy, the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research, and the Wydra Division of Shipping and Ports at the University of Haifa. His research interests include international security, geopolitics, US foreign policy, Israeli foreign policy, and US-Israel relations.