It has more to do with power than with culture. Iran and Israel seem to be the only potential regional hegemons (Israel the current one, Iran the potential next one, though I don’t think the transition will happen soon, if ever.) In contrast, Jordan has to get along with Israel or face the consequences of a very hostile, very power next-door neighbour. Also, when Syria helped the Palestinian uprising in Jordan (by sending tanks into Jordan), Israel scared them off with military maneuvers on their border.
On the culture side, Palestinians are very excluded in countries where they live (and were born and will die, at this point).
IOW, Israel and Jordan have lots of common interests; Iran and Jordan have lots of opposing interests. Power matters.
Honestly, world opinion doesn’t really matter when you’re being forced to give up all your power. The relevance of media was how it let people organize within the country. Also, the military is the really key point. The conscripted Egyptian military just plain wasn’t going to fire on Egyptian civilians without a really, really good reason. The Chinese military was.
Even elected officials are getting Tunisia-slapped! Just saw a CNN clip of a protest in Milan demanding the recently-sex-scandalled Berlusconi step down.
Well, sure, nobody stays on top forever, but Iran lacks the capacity at the moment (and isn’t going to magically get better), and just about nobody wants them to be the hegemon. Hence the stuff on Wikileaks about Gulf leaders wanting the US to bomb. Keep in mind, Iran is predominantly non-Arab, so they’re almost as much outsiders as Israelis.
Wait, how is Israel a regional hegemon? Is it the economic center of regional commerce? Does it have military bases all over the MENA? Israel is just the hot-tempered kid nobody in the neighborhood fucks with any more because he’s a lot tougher than he looks and his big brother is even worse.
Well, Israel has roughly the same GDP as Egypt, a country ten times its size, and the neighbors that do trade with it see good money from the relationship; and while it doesn’t have any foreign bases, it’s capable of projecting military power anywhere in the Middle East, which is something no Arab country can say. But no, Israel isn’t a regional hegemon.
If any country can claim hegemony over the region, or at least is on its way there, it’s Turkey. That’s one reason Ankara has been so vocally anti-Israeli recently - it’s been trying to assert its leadership.
Israel isn’t I think a “regional hegemon”. It can’t dominate either Egypt or Syria among its immediate neighbours (though neither can those countries dominate it); much less Saudi Arabia, Iran or Turkey.
Amusingly, the Wiki article of regional hegemony mentions Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran and Turkey all as examples cited by someone or other of ‘regional hegemons’. Seems somewhat counter-intuitive to me to have more than one listed …
Oh, and FTR, if the Egyptian Revolution needs to be associated with a color or a plant, I nominate “Papyrus Revolution.” What other plant is associated in the global public mind with Egypt?
We’re going to have to wait until whites are no longer the majority in the U.S. for revolutions like that to happen. No, really. When you look at the exit polls 9 out of 10 blacks and 2 out of every 3 Hispanics voted for Democrats. The ONLY racial group that people like Boehner won with was white voters. (This is not racism, it is a fact of voting statistics.)
Furthermore, non-white births became the majority of births in 2010. We may very well see a racially multi-lateral America by 2050 and going by current trends Republicanism will not survive.
