Escalation in Middle East and Beyond

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who has served as the sixth president of Ukraine since 2019. He took office five years after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War with Russia's annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas, and has continued to serve during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been ongoing since February 2022.

Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He served as Minister of Economics and Finance under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016. He has been a member of Renaissance since founding the party in 2016.

Fumio Kishida is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2021 until his resignation in 2024. He has represented Hiroshima 1st in the House of Representatives since 1996. Before his premiership, he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017, as acting Minister of Defense in 2017, and he also chaired the LDP Policy Research Council from 2017 to 2020.

Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva-Kinova is a Bulgarian economist who has served as the 12th managing director of the International Monetary Fund since 2019. She is the first person from an emerging market economy to lead the institution.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

Jaime Gilinski Bacal is a Panama-based Colombian banker, investor, and real estate developer. According to Forbes, he is the second richest person in Colombia, with a net worth of US$15.1 billion as of 2026.

Cellou Dalein Diallo is a Guinean economist and politician who was Prime Minister of Guinea from 2004 to 2006. Previously he held a succession of ministerial posts in the government from 1996 to 2004. Currently he is President of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), an opposition party. He was a candidate in the 2020 Guinean presidential election but lost to incumbent Alpha Condé.

Aquiles Álvarez is an Ecuadorian politician, who was elected to be the mayor of Guayaquil from 2023 to 2027.

Esmail Qaani is an Iranian brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who serves as the commander of the IRGC Quds Force, an elite special operations force responsible for extraterritorial operations. Qaani succeeded Qasem Soleimani as Quds Force commander after Soleimani was assassinated in January 2020.

Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian politician and Muslim cleric. The second eldest child of Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei served in the Iran–Iraq War from 1987 to 1988, and also reportedly took control of the Basij that was used to suppress the protests over the 2009 election.

Penelope Ying-Yen Wong is an Australian politician who is serving as the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate in the Albanese government since 2022. A member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), she has been a senator for South Australia since 2002. Wong previously served as Minister for Climate Change and Minister for Finance and Deregulation during the governments of prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2007 until 2013.