The Hill News

The whole Middle East changed the moment Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak left office after 30 years. The departure of Tunisia’s Pres. Zein El-Abideen Ben Ali, one month earlier â€" also in response to a popular uprising â€" had been a harbinger of Mubarak’s departure. But Egypt is much weightier and more important than Tunisia. And the wave of popular unrest in Arab countries still continues, with large movements now challenging key U.S. allies in Yemen and Bahrain.

It is probably little comfort to U.S. planners in the Pentagon and the White House that the mullahs’ regime in Iran is also currently facing some kind of a youth revolt. (The size and impact of Iran’s revolt have yet to be determined.)But what is happening in Egypt is undoubtedly huge!

So long as Mubarak was in power in Cairo, the country’s strategically located land-mass and large military were key components of the Pentagon’s planning for the whole of the “Centcom”! area, which includes the battlefield of Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Iran. And now, he is gone. 

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