The balance of power in the Middle East is in disarray: A three-year civil war has torn apart Syria and opened up a vacuum for the rise of the Islamic State group; Sunni powers led by Saudi Arabia continue to face off against Shi'ite powers led by Iran; other countries are reeling from uprisings in the Arab Spring; and foreign powers are all taking sides.
Faced with this tense paradigm, every country in the region is building up its own military.
Jump to the rankings »
Indeed, four of the five fastest-growing defense markets in 2013 were in the Middle East, led by Oman — up 115% in a year — and Saudi Arabia — up 300% in a decade — according to IHS Jane's.
We have analyzed each country to rank the most powerful militaries in the Middle East. This ranking does not count foreign powers like the US or their support, though we have noted important alliances. After looking over state militaries, we also profiled (but did not rank) some of the increasingly powerful non-state military groups.
The ranking is based on a holistic assessment of the militaries' operational capabilities and hardware, based on our research and on interviews with Patrick Megahan, an expert from the Foundation of Defense of Democracies' Military Edge project, and Chris Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.
Some countries with large yet incapable militaries rank low on the list; some smaller and technologically advanced militaries from stable states rank fairly high.
Others present analytical challenges that are difficult to get around in a ranking format. For instance, Egypt has an enormous military with little in the way of a recent battlefield record. Syria's military is diminished by three years of war, but it has been able to fulfill the Assad regime's narrow battlefield objectives and field an operational air force.
No ranking will be absolutely exact. But here's our idea of where things stand in one of the world's least-predictable regions.
No. 15 Yemen
$1.4 billion defense budget
66,700 active frontline personnel
1,260 tanks
181 aircraft
Yemen's military has struggled in the face of an onslaught from the Houthi rebel movement, which captured the Ministry of Defense's headquarters in the capital city of Sa'ana during a September 2014 offensive. Yemen has all sorts of other problems on its hands as well, like the presence of a major Al Qaeda franchise and one of the highest rates of gun ownership on earth.
Like a few other countries in this ranking, Yemen is ruled by a government that doesn't really control its own territory, a fact that negates much of the advantage the country might derive from its fairly large conventional military. It's a collapsed state with an outdated arsenal.
The remains of Yemen's hobbled government have also joined up with the Houthi rebels to fight Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This is actually another sign of the state's weakness. It took a motivated and organized non-state sectarian militant group to confront Yemen's Al Qaeda franchise, something the uniform military hasn't been able or willing to do.
Key allies: Yemen has had a longstanding, if sometimes uneasy, security partnership with the US and allows the US to use armed drones to go after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on its territory.
No. 14 Lebanon
$1.7 billion defense budget
131,100 active frontline personnel
318 tanks
57 aircraft
The Lebanese Armed Forces is an all-volunteer force, having ended compulsory military service as of February 2007. Historically, the Lebanese military was kept small due to internal disagreements among the various religious groups within the country. During Lebanon's 15-year civil war, a national military effectively ceased functioning as the country was divided between Israeli, Syrian, UN, and militia zones of control.
Since the Lebanese civil war, the Lebanese military has focused mainly on anti-terrorist and peacekeeping activities within the country. The military has been unable and unwilling to disarm the militant group Hezbollah, which is an even more capable fighting force than the Lebanese army.
In March the International Support Group for Lebanon pledged $17.8 million to help the country modernize its military, while Saudi Arabia gave a $3 billion grant.
Currently, Lebanon's Special Forces is unevenly equipped, and the country lacks any fixed-wing aircraft.
It is an incoherent force in a divided country, without much heavy equipment and with only notional control. "They're really far behind," Megahan, a research associate for military affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an analyst for its Military Edge project, told Business Insider.
Key allies: Saudi Arabia and the US, which also provides military aid.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider