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.