There’s a riot going on – BRB

The positioning of headscarves has assumed huge importance in the battle for greater women's rights in Iran

“OUR street is quiet now — we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts.”

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n’ out.”

The commonly accepted distinction between revolt and revolution is that the former fails while the other does not. Iran now sits on that knife edge, with the rest of the Middle East claimed to be hanging on the every word of Twittering demonstrators like those above.

While the UK continues to witter about Twitter, it seems that dissidents have found in it the tool to finally take on repressive authorities. And while Riyadh could be a million miles from Tehran for all they have in common, reports suggest that Web 2.0 applications are causing profound concerns for non-elected leaders in the region.

The reason for this is simple: people have moved on while their leaders have remained tied to the old ways of disseminating information and propaganda. Where the clerics use megaphones, the crowds use mobile phones. Where the crowds use social sites, the Iranian regime is still hopelessly reliant upon state television, with all that title implies.

But it isn’t just technology that is putting inventive demonstrators ahead of the Islamic Republic. John Simpson reported this week that many have resorted to the decades-old tactic of shouting their news across the rooftops, something not seen since the Iranian Revolution some 30 years ago. These sometimes-eerie sounding utterances must be further unnerving police chiefs struggling to keep a lid on the unrest.

As so often is the case, much turns upon which side the army takes. It is widely supposed that it is the election result and not the republic that is being marched against, and whether this results in the restoration of the status quo or the appointment of Mir-Hossein Mousavi (a former favourite of the Ayatollah Khomeini) as Iranian president remains to be seen. However, in continuing to ignore Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, an important milestone has been passed. If the Iranian authorities decide to get truly violent, the republic could fall.

While the threat of civil war remains extremely distant, there are plenty of states in the region administered in similar ways to Iran. Most likely to feel the “us, too” effect would, on the face of it, appear to be Syria. However, even though the Levant has remained under ‘emergency law’ since 1963, Bashar al-Assad is not a Syrian strongman to match his late father, Hafiz.

His leadership has seen an easing of restrictions. He is, for example, an enthusiastic advocate of online access and while Facebook, Hotmail and other social media are banned, getting around these strictures have not proved onerous for many Syrians, who believe change would come a lot quicker were al-Assad’s hand not quite so stayed by his father’s ageing, inner Ba’athist circle. Much of the population appears content to sit tight and wait for age to play its part rather than risk their skulls against the riot police.

It seems feasible that Hosni Mubarak and his Egyptian regime will have felt the chill of uncertainty as Iranian unrest gathered speed. But among Egyptians, who have heard and ignored over a year’s worth of online calls for rallies and strikes, there remains been a somewhat despondent response to Persian events.

“We hope and we always keep faith that what’s happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes,” Ibrahim Issa, editor of the Cairo independent newspaper Al Dustour, told the LA Times. “But reality tells us that this is not applicable. The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system. The bottom line is that unlike Iran, we are politically dead.”

Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, face a different issue altogether with social media. Far from moving the country closer to the West, as young Iranians want, its people increasingly resent the country’s relationship with the US. In addition to providing nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers, Saudis continue to make up a predominance of foreign fighters in Afghanistan.

While most Saudis will never participate in jihadist activity, social media is widely regarded as a step away from Wahabism and its Medievalist tenets. At least one honour killing has arisen out of Facebook, while leading preacher Sheikh Ali al-Maliki called the site “the door to lust for women”. There is a grain of truth in his comments, as the site certainly has a strong female following. One anonymous user told The Guardian: “In Saudi Arabia, we live more of a virtual life than a real life. I know people who are involved in on-line romances with people they have never met in real life.”

So far, dissent doesn’t figure greatly on Saudi online communities. However, its runaway success as a tool for organising opposition may give rise to a “me, too” way of thinking. This was last used to devastating effect with al-Qaeda, transforming it from a terrorist organisation to an idea that anybody can use, making it far more dangerous to the West. Perhaps social media and its infinite possibilities could do the same for the Middle East.