The Western political establishment still seems to believe in a sort of reverse "Exceptionalism". The Arab world CAN NEVER operate in a democracy. They will ALWAYS turn to despots OR religious extremists.
DONKEY DUST!!
Much has changed in the world since 9/11/2001. While those that benefit financially, or by prestige or status from the insane security apparatus that the West, and especially the U.S., has constructed are too busy compiling worthless reports to be read by those without the capacity for abstract thought, the world has moved on.
Under no circumstance is Egypt the next Iran. Iran won't even be the next Iran for long (provided Iran does not become a nuclear power). Egypt might well roil for some time, but anybody that thinks that that society is going to tolerate a theocracy has rocks in their head. This is not 1990! That pitch from the Despots: "It is us or the Islamic extremists" is Bull Sh#! No matter how censored a society is it is damn near impossible to keep out the influence screaming out of the Web. Don't be fooled by the illiteracy pitch, either... illiterate people in every society get very little done, that rule applies to the Arab world.
"Stability", as far as the OECD is concerned, in the region has only one definition: Stability in the flow of Oil out of the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea. None of the feel-good-Lefty-weenies of the social-safety-net-variety in the Welfare/Euro Zone gave a good fart how many Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemenie's, or Saudi's had their armpits cooked with a blow torch by their respective "secret police" - the prisons in these countries would make Papillon's skin crawl - as long as the Oil kept flowing.
Yemen is days or weeks away from full scale revolt, and Algeria ain't far behind... and with approximately 25% of the Oil exports of Saudi Arabia, Algeria is a problem all its own... but in the end, it was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ("KSA") for whom all Western (read U.S.) policy regarding the Middle East and North Africa has been promulgated; I have already covered Saudi Arabia in my previous post.
Events are overtaking most of the West's liberal-democracies, and they are scrambling to "respond". A great deal of blame and claim is going to go around, most of which is not warranted. The Arab world is not doomed to an eternity of ignorance, though they might be doomed in the short term to violence. In the final analysis the flow of Oil from what is now the KSA is going to be determined by what is in the best interests of the Arabian people, no Saudi about it.