The Most Powerful Militaries In The Middle East [RANKED]

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 ISIS; 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.

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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've 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've made note of 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 own 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's 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.