Obama Doctrine in Bahrain amounts to protection of dictatorship: Franklin Lamb http://tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=239462

A: I believe the uprisings will continue during this historic Islamic and Arab Awakening and will not cease until those who are sacrificing their blood in these countries—and some you did not mention-achieve their common goals of dignity, human rights, and much more control over their lives and their country’s natural resources. This truly historic regional uprising will, in my view, also contribute critically to the liberation of Palestine and the end of the 19th Century Zionist colonial project.

Resent reactions by Israeli leaders and some in Washington make plain that the Muslim and Arab world will not allow their regimes to continue to undermine the Palestinian cause by accepting Western aid and various American bribes to collaborate with the Zionist occupation in their midst. Eventually the current uprising will replace perhaps as many as ten regimes and to its great credit, will count the implementation of UN Resolution 194 and the full and long overdue return of the Palestinian Refugees to their homeland.

 To comment of the last part of your question first, I would not go as far as to say that the 1979 Iranian Revolution provided an exact template for what is occurring now, 32 years later. But I strongly believe that the Iranian revolution is a fundamental cause of the 2011 uprisings. Firstly, we often hear some argue that the current rebellions are all about bread and butter issues and are not motivated by religion. I don’t agree. While the issues expressed on the streets have been largely those we discussed above, I think a fundamental factor that initiated what we are witnessing is Islam.

Islam is all about justice and sacrifice for the commonweal of the community, the Ummah. Islam is about the dignity of the individual. I believe that Islam provided the inspiration and the strength of the populations involved in each of these historic uprisings to preserve in the fact of brutal repression and to develop a resistance culture to preserve until victory.