The Most Powerful Militaries In The Middle East

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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.
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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.
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Qatar made the single-biggest purchase of US arms in 2014 by acquiring $11 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries and Apache helicopters. But that shows that its pint-size military realizes how far it has to go to hang with other armies in the region, many of which are also rapidly modernizing. “Qatar is trying to do catch-up now,” Megahan told Business Insider.
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That doesn't mean it's weak, though. The military has newer-model F-16s and has expressed interest in purchasing the Eurofighter jet. “They've been spending money kind of quietly,” Megahan says.
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Jordan is thought to have a strong special forces component but an outdated tank corps and air force. “They have older British tanks and modernized versions of of older American tanks,” Megahan says. “I don’t think they have them in large numbers, and they haven't invested a lot in their air force.”
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That doesn't make Iran a major conventional military power, though. As Megahan says, the military is hampered by corruption and poor leadership, with regime loyalty often mattering more than merit among the officer corps. Iran has invested heavily in building its own weaponry, including ballistic missiles. It's all unproven.

“They try really hard to have an indigenous military industry,” he says. “There not a lot of evidence to suggest that it's actually really going well.”
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Megahan says that the UAE's air force has upgraded its planes to the point where it flies some of the most advanced F-16's on earth. It has even looked into purchasing the F-35. Emirate defense spending has increased by 85% since 2004, and it has now cracked the top 15 of global defense spenders — incredibly for a country with only 9 million citizens.
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“Saudi Arabia has a lot of air capabilities that a lot of the countries in the region don’t have,” Megahan said, adding that it was plausible the Saudis could soon have a more advanced air force than even Israel.
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Since 1998, Turkey has attempted to modernize its military, which has started production of a native next-generation tank. Turkey produces a lot of advanced defense technology in-country now, Megahan says: “We're seeing more Turkish-made systems in the Turkish military, whereas before it was a lot of American equipment.”
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