THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 32, February 1, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
TURMOIL IN EGYPT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
EGYPT'S MOMENT OF CRISIS & THE PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES: THE UPRISING IN EGYPT & THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
OF 1979 -- THE IRANIAN ISLAMISTS & THEIR ASPIRATION FOR DOMINANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE MIDDLE EAST & THE
REGIONAL COLD WAR -- THE IRANIAN-LED RESISTANCE BLOC VERSUS THE SAUDI-LED STATUS QUO BLOCK -- THE MILITARY
FORCES VERSUS THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT -- THE OLD GUARD IN TUNISIA & WHAT IS LIKELY TO BE THE OUTCOME OF THE
TURMOIL IN EGYPT -- U.S. FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE SITUATION & ROLE OF ISRAEL IN THE
REGIONAL CONFLICT
FULL STORY:
As Egypt's much-anticipated moment of crisis arrived and popular rebellions shook governments across the Middle East,
Iran stands as never before at the center of the region. Its Islamist rulers are within sight of dominating the region. But
revolutions are hard to pull off, and I predict that Islamists will not achieve a Middle East-wide breakthrough and Tehran
will not emerge as the key powerbroker. Some thoughts behind this conclusion:
An echo of the Iranian revolution: On reaching power in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sought to spread
Islamist insurrection to other countries, but failed almost everywhere. Three decades had to go by, it appears, before the
self-immolation of a vendor in an obscure Tunisia town could light the conflagration that Khomeini aspired to and Iranian
authorities still seek.
Part of a Middle Eastern cold war: The Middle East has, for years, been divided into two large blocs engaged in
a regional cold war for influence. The Iranian-led resistance bloc includes Turkey, Syria, Gaza, and Qatar. The Saudi-led
status quo bloc includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, the West Bank, Jordan, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf emirates.
Note that Lebanon these very days is moving to resistance from status quo and that unrest is taking place only in status
quo places.
Israel's peculiar situation: Israeli leaders are staying mum and its near-irrelevance underlines Iranian centrality.
While Israel has much to fear from Iranian gains, these simultaneously highlight the Jewish state as an island of stability
and the West's only reliable ally in the Middle East.
Lack of ideology: The sloganeering and conspiracy theories that dominate Middle Eastern discourse are largely
absent from crowds gathered outside of government installations demanding an end to stagnation, arbitrariness,
corruption, tyranny, and torture.
Military vs. mosque: Recent events confirm that the same two powers, the armed forces and the Islamists,
dominate some 20 Middle Eastern countries: the military deploys raw power and Islamists offer a vision. Exceptions exist
– a vibrant Left in Turkey, ethnic factions in Lebanon and Iraq, democracy in Israel, Islamist control in Iran – but this
pattern widely holds.
Iraq: The most volatile country of the region, Iraq, has been conspicuously absent from the demonstrations
because its population is not facing a decades-old autocracy.
A military putsch? Islamists wish to repeat their success in Iran by exploiting popular unrest to take power.
Tunisia's experience bears close examination for a pattern that may be repeated elsewhere. The military leadership there
apparently concluded that its strongman, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had become too high maintenance – especially with
his wife's family's flamboyant corruption – to maintain in power, so it ousted him and, for good measure, put out an
international arrest warrant for his and his family's arrest.
That done, nearly the entire remaining old guard remains in power, with the top military man, Chief of Staff Rachid
Ammar, apparently having replaced Ben Ali as the country's powerbroker. The old guard hopes that tweaking the
system, granting more civil and political rights, will suffice for it to hold on to power. If this gambit succeeds, the
seeming revolution of mid-January, 2011, will end up as a mere coup d'état.
This scenario could be repeated elsewhere, especially in Egypt, where soldiers have dominated the government since
1952 and intend to maintain their power against the Muslim Brethren they have suppressed since 1954. Strongman
Hosni Mubarak's appointment of Omar Suleiman as Vice President -- and the clear successor to the Egyptian
Presidency -- terminates the Mubarak family's dynastic pretensions and raises the prospect of Mr. Mubarak resigning
in favor of direct military rule.
More broadly, I bet on the more-continuity-than-change model that has emerged so far in Tunisia. Heavy-handed rule
will lighten somewhat in Egypt and elsewhere, but the militaries will remain the ultimate powerbrokers.
U.S. policy: The U.S. government has a vital role helping Middle Eastern states transit from tyranny to political
participation without Islamists hijacking the process. George W. Bush had the right idea in 2003 in calling for democracy,
but he ruined this effort by demanding instant results. Barack Hussein Obama initially reverted to the failed old policy of
making nice with tyrants; now he is myopically siding with the Islamists against Mr. Mubarak. He should emulate Bush,
but do a better job, understanding that democratization is a decades-long process that requires the inculcation of
counter-intuitive ideas about elections, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in the Washington Times, February 1, 2011
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, February 1, 2011
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org//9391/turmoil-in-egypt
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Egypt, Arabs, & the Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
North Africa -- The Arab States of Islamic North Africa
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
Dr. Pipes lived in Egypt for three years.
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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