DBWI: Ageing Arab dictators are vulnerable?

I've just checked Wikipedia's list of longest-serving leaders and I've noticed a large proportion of them are Arabs. Gaddafi, Mubarak, Saleh, and Assad all seem to be running family businesses and none have any chance of changing course. Given the high levels of corruption and unemployment among youth, do you think they could be toppled by mass uprisings? There's only so much a secret police can do. OTOH, all of them have shown a remarkable ability to hold to power and eliminate potential rivals.
 
It's in the best interest of the US to keep those regimes in power, so it'll be difficult for them to be toppled externally.
 
I mean it's always possible, we've seen regimes be toppled unexpectedly before, the quick, epidemic collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe as an example.

There were stirrings of unrest in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 over economic reform and such, but it seemed like in Egypt anyway that Mubarak's reform package seemed to placate most of them, though that made him get a lot closer to the military and things like that don't always end up well.

Assad managed to prove his stripes as a reformer, the West has been wrong about people like him before, but Assad wasn't one of them, in any case, minority support for his regime remains immense, none of them want to deal with the idea of a radical regime getting into power.
 
Look up Hama, that is what will happen in Syria or Libya if they try anything significant, Egypt or Yemen is another story but that would not be pretty either and the people know this
 
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