Strategic Assessment

In recent months the Middle East has experienced profound changes, some of them unprecedented in terms of their nature and impact. They figure among the most dramatic transformations to occur in the region since it was molded into its modern form after World War I. The unrest has emerged in several individual states, but the confluence of events and their similar backgrounds, as well as the fact that the upheavals tend to reinforce one another, has lent the unrest the sense of a widespread regional groundswell. To date it is unclear where the unrest is heading, but it is obvious that it has already changed the face of the Middle East.