WI : No Arab Spring?

As everybody knows the Arab Spring which has come to be very important in recent world history began when a merchant set himself on fire in protest at the government after a particularly aggravating encounter with a municipal official took his cart. But what if he hadn't run into the official and therefore didn't immolate himself?
Given the condition of the Middle East some form of revolutionary wave was probably inevitable. But without the spark of Tunisia when would it start and what form would it take? And how would the rest of the world be affected?
 
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