During the first quarter of the third Christian millennium the Middle East conflict will be between democrats and autocrats rather than the Arabs and Israelis. The struggle will be over polity rather than land. What happens in the regional peace process will have little impact on the struggle for political change.
Unless the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, is resolved satisfactorily from the Arab point of view, which is unlikely, relations will remain cold between the two peoples. There will be no Arab-Israeli partnership in a "new Middle East", no war, no warm peace.
Arab rulers will have to focus on their shortcomings in government and the ills of their own unstable societies in order to stay in power. Those who do not reform will fall by the wayside.
Western-type secular democracy, military and one-party rule, civilian dictatorship, and monarchy have not only failed the Arab people but also have alienated them from their rulers and their Western supporters. Confused and seeking reassurance from the past, many ordinary Arabs will continue to turn to Islam as the solution. But they will find that traditional Islamists speak about the corrupting influences of the modern world and castigate the West but have no blueprint for economic advancement and political independence.
One country, Iran, is making just such a blueprint for itself.
The Iranian Islamic Republic is the socio-political model destined to galvanise the region as a whole. The model is indigenous and it is the first experiment in Islamic democracy. Iran now has a dynamic, pluralistic and progressive Islamic system which retains religious values and practice. Iran's clerical establishment - comprised of constantly contesting conservatives, liberals and in-betweens - has been compelled by circumstances and public opinion to adopt a flexible approach to political and economic reform.
Parliamentary elections, scheduled for February 2000, are expected to boost the power of the reformers and give impetus to the transformation of Iranian society.
The stark contrast between Iran's vital, vibrant political life and the sad, static scene in most Arab countries is not lost on an increasingly frustrated Arab people. Although the vigorous political debate gripping Iran in the last three years of the 20th century - since the election of the reformist Muhammad Khatami to the presidency - seems to be confined to that country, there is a spill-over effect.
Thanks to radio, satellite television and the Internet, events in Iran are followed closely by both scholars and ordinary citizens throughout the Muslim world. Some of the Iranian intellectuals shaping Iran's future, like the progressive thinker, Dr Abdolkarim Saroush, maintain a dialogue with like-minded individuals in other Muslim countries. They could, given the opportunity, launch evolutionary Islamic democratisation in their own countries. The more Iran succeeds, the greater will be the challenge to other Muslim peoples to emulate the Islamic Republic.
The issue which will serve as a catalyst in conservative countries will be the status of women. In Iran, women hold positions in the administration, the judiciary and business, vote and stand for elective office. In the Gulf, women are still segregated and excluded from public life although they have begun to make inroads in the commercial sector. In 1999, two Gulf potentates, the rulers of Qatar and Kuwait, tried to bring women into political life but were rebuffed by the conservative tribal and religious constituencies on which shaikhly rule is based.
Qatar held its first election for a municipal council.
For the first time in the Gulf, women as well as men stood as candidates and voted. None were elected. The ruler of Kuwait issued a decree allowing women to vote for the emirate's narrow franchise parliament but this was vetoed by the assembly where tribal and Islamist elements have a majority. But the fact that the rulers have now joined battle with the conservatives means that reform is on the agenda. Qatar is expected to establish an elected parliament on the basis of general franchise and Kuwaiti liberals are preparing to renew the fight for women's rights.
One of the reasons the Gulf states have waited so long to grant women rights is Saudi opposition. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who has launched an economic reform programme, dares not raise the issue of the status of women who are not even allowed to drive. But many Saudi women are determined to change this situation.
Once they secure their rights, there will be a rapid easing of social repression in the name of religion and a demand for major reforms.
Both the conservative Gulf states and more modern states where women have political rights will find Iran's Islamic democracy threatening in three other ways. First, the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, is not a rubber-stamp for government policies as is the case with most Arab parliaments. The Majlis is increasingly asserting its authority.
Second, the gradual separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers in Iran is creating checks and balances in the system of governance and installing the rule of law, curbing clerics who previously ruled by diktat. And, third, Iran's reformers are pressing for transparency and accountability in government.
The new young monarchs of Morocco and Jordan, King Muhammad VI and King Abdullah II, who came to their thrones in 1999, have promised the sort of reforms that are being carried out in Iran. And Dr Bashar al Assad, the son and political heir of the Syrian president, is leading the campaign for reform in his country. But the rigid rulers of Palestine, Egypt, Algeria and non-Arab Turkey could face serious popular discontent if they do not bend to the prevailing global pressures for political and social change.
It is ironic that developments in Iran will, in the next century, encourage neighbours to emulate Tehran's brand of progressive Islamic democracy. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in 1979, Tehran tried and failed to export a backward-looking Islamic revolutionary system based on autocratic rule by men of religion. But this was the wrong sort of revolution at the wrong time, while Islamic democracy is the Muslim revolutionary movement of the new millennium.
It could transform the Middle East from an area of absolutism to a region of democracy in very much the same way Latin America was freed from dictatorship in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Michael Jansen can be contacted at janpar@logos.cy.net