Coronavirus is a ticking time-bomb for the Middle East’s old guard

I used to believe that there were only two options for leadership change in the Middle East: the coup or the coffin. But now there’s another thing for embattled authoritarians to worry about. It’s not the Republican Guard, CIA, MI6 or Mossad, Delta Force or the SAS – it’s Covid-19. And while the virus may well end up fundamentally changing many of our own political expectations, not least about China (Huawei anyone?), and the resilience of our own societies, it may have an even bigger impact on the fragile political ecosystem of the Middle East and North Africa.

And that’s because it is there that a superannuated old order has most persistently refused to die. Revolutions have been dead ends, reform an illusion. No new political dispensation has been carried to term for 70 years. The body politic in many Arab countries – and Iran – was already suffering from serious underlying health conditions.