Non-violent democratic revolutions are sweeping through the Arab World, until now one of the last strongholds of tyranny and poverty. They are a great advance for liberty, but they don’t solve the problem of poverty – and they may open the door to power to Islamist movements. They may also destroy the Arab-Israeli “peace process”, but it was pretty close to dead anyway.

The great fear in the West is that Islamist radicals will win the struggle for power in the post-revolutionary Arab countries as they did in post-revolutionary Iran 30 years ago. Will new anti-Western regimes cut off the West’s oil supply, or send terrorists to attack Western countries, or both?