Yemenis voted on Tuesday February 21st, and after thirty-three years of authoritarian rule, Ali Abdullah Saleh was replaced as head of state by current Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi. It remains to be seen whether the winner of this one-man contest will cooperate with the United States on counter-terrorism.

American assistance programs aimed at helping Yemen build and maintain counterterrorism forces will not suffice in the face of a real and growing al Qaeda-affiliated insurgency.

Mubarak's fall will have even deeper reverberations throughout the region than Ben Ali's did. Which will be the next dominoes to drop?

Law enforcement is not sufficient when faced with the reality of the war, as demonstrated by the attack on the USS Cole by al Qaeda operatives a decade ago this week.

It is highly likely but not inevitable that the Muslim Brotherhood will win the elections to be held in Egypt this coming September.

Although the Salah government of Yemen is an unpalatable partner, we must side with it against insurgents if we want its support against al Qaeda.

It is too early to tell whether the revolutions sweeping across the Arab world will prove the long awaited "third wave of democratization." It is clear, however, that no regional regime is immune to their impact, not even the self-proclaimed vanguard of permanent world revolutions, the Islamist regime in Tehran.