Defense and Armaments Trends in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

The highly complex security environment of the Middle East led to a major increase in the defense spending of regional states in the last few decades. Primarily, the countries of the Persian Gulf region were spending extensively on their defense forces. This was fueled by the growth in capacity of the regional non-state armed actors, as well as developments in technology, primarily the highly impactful effects of unmanned systems. This article aims to summarize the most significant trends that became apparent in the countries of the region, on such important fields as international defense related cooperation, major arms purchases and technological developments etc. The article will give great attention to the capacity increase of the non-state armed actors supported by Iran.