Trump's motives are crude and obvious and corrupt. His actions are geopolitical arson.

But despite the universal prediction that the Middle East will erupt in flames, I wonder if they--the "street", the populations expected to be enraged--will react so predictably this time?

What's crucially different now, I think, is that Trump has abandoned the role of "leader of the free world", no longer speaks for any nation other than the US. We can't count on anybody to have our backs and back our plays. That universal condemnation of Trump's panderous move testifies to loss of American influence.

So will they see it differently this time? The Middle East is connected to the global Internet, they've been experiencing Trump in real time along with everybody else. They know that, this time, the American President isn't representing a united coalition of "Crusaders", that Trump is an anomaly who will soon, the whole world prays, be gone from office.

Or I could be being a pollyanna again, and in 48 hours Trump's match will have lit yet another conflagration. Another interpretation of the apparent sophistication of a wired population is that it can be manipulated en masse (as we've learned to our sorrow), and many of the Middle Eastern leaders harshly condemning Trump may want riots and unrest, and a renewal of their own political power.

Who knew the Middle East could be so complicated?