Hoshyar Zebari is an Iraqi – Kurdish politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the country in 2014 and as Minister of Finance until 2016. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2014. Zebari was born to a Kurdish Iraqi family in Aqrah, a city in Duhok Governorate, and grew up in Mosul. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Jordan in 1976. He also obtained a Master of Arts in Sociology of Development from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom in 1980. While studying in Britain, he led the Kurdish Students Society in Europe and served as the chairman of the Overseas Student Committee from 1978 to 1980.

Zebari joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1979. In the 1980s, he fought as a member of the Peshmerga in the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict against the government of Saddam Hussein. He went on to become a member of the KDP’s Central Committee and its Political Bureau. In 1988, he was put in charge of its foreign relations and represented the party in the United States and the UK. In 1992, he was appointed a member of the executive committee of the Iraqi National Congress and was made part of its Presidential Council in 1999.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Zebari was appointed a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. He was made foreign minister in September 2003.[9] In July 2012, he said that al-Qaeda in Iraq members had gone to Syria, where the militants previously received support and weapons.

On 11 July 2014, Zebari was replaced as foreign minister by Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, who assumed the position in an acting capacity after Kurdish politicians withdrew from the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. On 8 September 2014, he was appointed a Deputy Prime Minister under the government of the new premier, Haider al-Abadi.