Revolution on the Nile felt across region

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Less than a month after the world watched Tunisia celebrate the collapse of the country's strong-arm ruler, the scenes in central Cairo on Friday offered an even more potent display of the newfound power of the Arab street: fist-pumping crowds cheering the end of President Hosni Mubarak.

The downfall of Mubarak - one of the mainstays of Middle East politics and Western policies in the region for nearly three decades - marks another history-shaping moment for the Arab world from a country seen by many as its political and cultural crucible.

What began as a tentative cry against an entrenched regime in late January grew into a popular mutiny that forced Mubarak to flee Cairo and then step down in just a few dizzying hours.

But the revolution on the Nile - which reached its climax 32 years to the day after the fall of the government of the U.S.-backed shah of Iran - raises deep questions about the long-term stability of other Western-allied regimes across the region and could significantly recalibrate America's policy playbook from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

There is no guarantee that the reform wave will wash over another country soon. An attempt to stir Egypt-inspired protests in Syria earlier this month was snuffed out by security forces.

The reverberations, however, are already being felt in smaller but significant ways.

In Saudi Arabia - the other traditional cornerstone of U.S. interests in the Mideast - a group of opposition activists said Thursday they asked the nation's king for the right to form a political party in a rare challenge to the absolute power of the ruling dynasty.

"You know well that big political developments and attention to freedom and human rights is currently happening in the Islamic world," the activist said in a letter to King Abdullah, who was one of Mubarak's staunchest supporters up until the end.

Jordan's new prime minister, Marouf Bakhit, promised Wednesday to continue political reforms demanded by protesters who forced King Abdullah II to reshuffle the cabinet. Last week, Yemen'

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