PoliticsArabZone: WSJ list: Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Palestinian Authority, Iran, and of course Tunisia and Egypt

Wall Street Journal carries a summative dispatch by margaret Coker, Matt Bradley, and Tamer El-Ghobashiny that overviews "demands for similiar political reforms" that have already "swept across the Arab world ... following the resignation of [Egypt's] President Hosni Mubarak.

Caution your optimism, however.  Iran is trying to co-opt the revolutionary virus, vainly imagining it can steer Arab youth in its own direction (Iran is not Arab, but Persian predominately).   Gaddafi's regime in Libya has been given almost a full week to prepare its troops and goons to smash the scheduled mass demonstrations planned for Thursday, Feb18,2k11.

Not mentioned on WSJ's list, both Jordan and Lebanon are still two cawt in their old ways, too impacted by stalemates (at best) that divide the new generation, apparently thus preventing the launch of any genuinely new initiative.  Don't look for any real change in these countries unless the new generational in Iran seizes its moment against the Ayatollahs, and wins.  More likely, the Iranian state woud use massive repression by its army and its Revolutionary Guards before a real chance were opened.  At the moment, Syria seems to have made its own separate peace with the agents of Iran who put the former country into the Iranian Ayatollah's orbit.

Three factors must be weighed in most of these countries:  women, Sunni vs Shi'ite differences in each population, and the size and entanglements of the Christian population in each of these countries where it exists.

-- Politicarp