{"id":6078,"date":"2011-04-16T11:07:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T07:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=6078"},"modified":"2011-04-16T11:07:34","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T07:07:34","slug":"no-big-sleep-for-the-mideasts-remaining-thugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/middle-east-government-analysis\/no-big-sleep-for-the-mideasts-remaining-thugs\/","title":{"rendered":"No Big Sleep for the MidEast’s Remaining Thugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Now that the Arab revolt is slamming hard into Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Baath Party in Syria, no Mideast or North African dictator will likely be able to sleep without first consuming copious amounts of booze and possibly pills.<\/p>\n

If neither Assad nor Libya\u2019s Moammar Khadafy \u2014 the two most ruthlessly repressive tyrants in the Arab world \u2014 is safe from his people\u2019s wrath, no Mideast despot is safe.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there are yesterday\u2019s reports of a massacre by Khadafy\u2019s forces in Misrata, and the news of Assad\u2019s own crackdown: The revolutionary wave isn\u2019t yet powerful enough to wash away the worst thugs. And hopes are even dimmer in (mostly non-Arab) Iran.<\/p>\n

Which means that the region\u2019s most serious threats to our interests \u2014 and to Mideast peace \u2014 remain. Israel and America are still heading toward a confrontation with the axis of terror that includes the Syrian and Iranian regimes as well as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

At least NATO is busy patrolling the skies over Libya. But the Arab League pretends there\u2019s nothing to see in Damascus as Assad warns darkly of Jewish plots, guns down demonstrators with live ammunition and takes organizers from their homes in the night, throwing them into dungeons.<\/p>\n

And the Iranian regime looks as strong as ever. Millions of demonstrators have been trying to bring down the government for almost two years now, but they appear no more likely to prevail today than they did when they started. If Green Movement leaders don\u2019t take up arms as Libya\u2019s rebels have, and if the Revolutionary Guard remains loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, Iran may well be immune from internally-driven regime-change for now.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remotely possible that the Gaza Strip Palestinians will temporarily forget about Israel and remove the Hamas entity that so cruelly governs them, but there\u2019s no chance at all that nonviolent protests or even an armed rebellion will eject Hezbollah from Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah isn\u2019t the government, it\u2019s a terrorist army, and it controls Lebanon from the shadows, where demonstrations can\u2019t reach it. Lebanon has produced more mass demonstrations than any Arab country by far, and has been producing them since 2005. But guerrillas in hardened bunkers who can\u2019t wait to go to heaven after impaling themselves on the Zionist Entity don\u2019t care two figs what protesters in Beirut, or even ostensible government ministers, have to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MICHAEL J. TOTTEN: Now that the Arab revolt is slamming hard into Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Baath Party in Syria, no dictator will be able to sleep without consuming copious amounts of pills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":6079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,83],"tags":[423,691,628,5389,114,703,278,861,4573,2325,227,2734,18306,18311,18309,18332,2860,3181,1808,234,18330],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}