Jalal Talabani

Jalal Talabani has been the President of Iraq since 2005. The first ethnically Kurdish man in this position, he has a long history of defending Kurdish rights against a pan-Arabist ideology that frequently denied their rights. After completing his compulsory military service, he joined Kurdish forces fighting against the government, commanding troops in several offensives across three decades of conflict. Off the battlefield, he advocated for the Kurds to various European and Middle Eastern nations.

Adel Safar

Adel Safar has been the Prime Minister of Syria since his appointment in April 2011. Trained in agriculture and biotechnology at universities in Syria and France, he was a professor and later Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at Damascus University before becoming secretary of the university's branch of the ruling Baath Party. In 2003, he became Minister of Agriculture. Safar is Shia, a minority both in the largely-Sunni nation and the largely-Alawi government.

Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres has been the President of Israel since 2007. After immigrating to Israel as a child, he joined the military during the War for Independence. After the war, he was a key negotiator, securing funding for the Dimona nuclear reactor, which some believe produces nuclear weapons. A Knesset member for nearly 50 years, he was Prime Minister twice. He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in secret negotiations leading to the Oslo Accords.

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has been the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai since his brother Maktoum's death in 2006. He also serves as the nation's Minister of Defence. Immensely wealthy from oil profits, his philanthropy includes the building of mosques around the world and an initiative to prevent blindness. He also owns many horses that compete in races around the world and is known in the region for his poetry.

Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi

Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi has been the vice president of Yemen since 1994 and its acting president since Ali Abdullah Saleh's resignation in November 2011. A former soldier, he rose to the rank of General before serving as Minister of Defence and soon after becoming vice president. Originally from South Yemen, he was a key southern ally to Saleh, a Zaidi Shia from the North.

Mohamed Abdelaziz

Mohamed Abdelaziz has been the leader of the Polisario Front, a claimant to the control of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, since 1976. After Spain granted Western Sahara independence in 1975, it was split between Mauritania and an independent country, which Morocco annexed. After a long civil war, a stalemate remains wherein Morocco has de facto control of most of Western Sahara's territory while the so-called Western Saharan government is exiled in Algeria.

Najib Mikati

Najib Mikati has been the Prime Minister of Lebanon since June 2011. A billionaire, he made his fortune from the telecom company he founded during the Lebanese Civil War. A member of Parliament for several years, he was appointed interim Prime Minister for three months in 2005 amid the fallout from Rafik Hariri's assassination and Syria's subsequent exit from Lebanon; his cabinet was mostly technocrats, and he did not stand in the 2005 elections.

Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani

From Reuters

Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani has been Prime Minister of Qatar since 2007 and its Foreign Minister since 1992. A second cousin of King Hamad bin Khalifa, he has held important positions in the government for much of his adult life, beginning in the agricultural sector. As Foreign Minister, he has sought to become a regional mediator, and he has allowed the American military to use a Qatari air base since September 11th.

Dawoud Rajiha

Dawoud Rajiha has been Syria's minister of defense since August 2011, before which he was the Chief of Staff of the Army. An artillery specialist, he graduated from the Military Academy at age 20 and held several prestigious positions in the Syrian Army before becoming Chief of Staff in 2009. Rajiha is a Greek Orthodox Christian, a rarity in the upper echelons of Syrian leadership, which is dominated by members of the Alawite faith.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi

Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi has been a military leader of the Houthi band of Zaidi Shia insurgents in Yemen since his brother Hussein's death in 2004. In 1994, Hussein started a faction of Shia called the Believing Youth (Shabab al-Mu'mineen), which opposes the Yemeni government's corruption on religious grounds. A peaceful movement in its first years, it became armed in 2004, launching an insurgency against the government; Hussein was killed three months into the conflict.

Necdet Özel

Necdet Özel has been the Chief of the General Staff of Turkey's armed forces since August 2011, when the top leadership resigned to protest judicial interference with the military. Prior to this appointment, he served in Cyprus before returning to Turkey, where he served in Kurdish regions and later commanded the War College. In 2010, he became commander of the Gendarmerie, which polices areas where the cost to maintain a police force would be prohibitive.

Benny Gantz

Benny Gantz has been the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces since February 2011. A former paratrooper, he fought alongside his soldiers as an officer during the 1982 Lebanon War. After assisting with Operation Shlomo, which airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, he commanded the army's Judea and Samaria division during the Second Intifada and was IDF attache in the United States before assuming Israel's highest military post.

Ataollah Salehi

Ataollah Salehi has been the Commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army since 2005. A career military man, he survived the purges accompanying Iran's transition from monarchy to Islamic Republic. After rising serving as an infantry officer, he became the commander of the Iranian army's main military academy before being chosen to command the country's ground forces, navy, and air force. He replaced Mohammad Salimi in this position a month after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became President of Iran.

Ramzan Kadyrov

Ramzan Kadyrov has been the President of Chechnya since 2007. Russia has many republics under its sovereignty. Ramzan is the son of Akhmat Kadyrov, the leader of a militia that changed allegiance in 1999 from the Chechen rebels to the Russians. After his father's 2004 assassination, Russian media suggested that Vladimir Putin supported Ramzan as his successor for the presidency. However, Ramzan was not yet the minimum age for the Chechen presidency.

Demetris Christofias

Demetris Christofias has been the President of Cyprus since 2008. He was born in present-day North Cyprus, which declared independence in 1974 from the rest of the island but is recognized only by Turkey. A communist, he attended university in Moscow and is the first communist leader of Cyprus or any European Union member state. He led Cyprus' Progressive (Communist) Party for over twenty years. Prior to becoming President, he headed Cyprus' House of Representatives for several years.

Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil Saakashvili has been the President of Georgia since 2004. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he practiced law in New York City for a year before returning to Georgia to enter politics after the USSR's dissolution. Once in Georgia, he quickly entered Parliament as a member of President Eduard Shevardnadze's party, eventually becoming Minister of Justice. However, he became disillusioned by the corruption in Shevardnadze's government and started a new political party.

Serzh Sargsyan

Serzh Sargsyan has been the President of Armenia since 2008. He was born in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed Armenian-majority region that in reality governs itself while technically remains a part of Azerbaijan. When Nagorno-Karabakh's independence war was breaking out as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, Sargsyan chaired the regions Self-Defense Forces committee, coordinating several battles, and for this he is considered key to the foundation of the armies of both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ilham Aliyev

Ilham Aliyev has been the President of Azerbaijan since his father's death in 2003. A member of the KGB, his father dominated Azerbaijani politics for nearly a half-century. When his father was in office, Ilham was vice-president of Azerbaijan's state oil company and he attained a reputation as a playboy. While Ilham was first considered to be a "transitional figure who will ensure a smooth succession", this assessment has proven false since he remains in office.

Ignatius Zakka I Iwas

Ignatius Zakka I has been the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church since 1980.  Born in Mosul, Iraq, his see is Antioch but he resides in Damascus, Syria. Orphaned at an early age, he began training for ecclesiastical life at age 13. A stellar student, he was ordained as a deacon and became a monk by age 21. He rose to Archbishop before being appointed Patriarch.

Aram I

Aram I has been the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church's Catholicosate of Cilicia since 1995.  As Catholicos, he oversees Armenian Orthodox believers outside Armenia.  Born in Lebanon, Aram studied in Lebanon, Switzerland, and the US.  Before becoming Catholicos, he served as Primate of Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War. A founding member of the Middle Eastern Council of Churches, Aram has continued the inter-Christian and interfaith dialogues as Catholicos.

Bechara Boutros al-Rahi

Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi has been the head of the Maronite Church since March 2011. Born in northern Lebanon, al-Rahi attended a prestigious Jesuit school near Beirut before becoming a priest and eventually studying at Rome's Lateran University. Before assuming the Patriarchy, he served as bishop of Byblos. As Patriarch, he controversially suggested that Bashar al-Assad should remain Syria's president; al-Assad has protected Syria's Christian minority to a large extent, which an Islamist government could discontinue.

Patriarch Bartholomew

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has been the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church since 1991.  He is a Turkish citizen of Greek ancestry, as the Ecumenical Patriarch must be according to Turkish law because the see is Constantinople (Istanbul).  While Turkey once had many ethnic Greeks, most emigrated or were killed in genocide as the Ottoman Empire fell. As Patriarch, Bartholomew has championed inter-Christian and inter-religious dialogue and has defended the environment.

Pope Shenouda

Pope Shenouda III is the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church; initially a monk and then a bishop, he has been the Patriarch of Alexandria since 1971.  Before his ascension to the highest post in the Coptic Church, he taught New Testament studies, eventually becoming Dean of the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. His papacy has not been without contention, including a three-year exile to the Egyptian desert following persecution by extremists.