Editor’s Note:Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

The instability in Egypt comes at a time when the region is already in the throes of shifts. But contrary to popular fears, the region is not necessarily headed toward an Iranian led radicalization. Instead a new and still emerging complex situation is something that the United States and the region and the rest of the world will have to deal with.

Egypt is in a situation of flux, and it is really too early to say what will be the outcome of all the unrest and instability. There are all sorts of options. One option, one likelihood, is that the current regime rejiggers itself, reinvents itself, sends Mubarak a continuation of the old order. Another option is that there are elections and some form of coalition government emerges, and that’s where it gets tricky because the Muslim brotherhood, the country’s largest and oldest Islamist movement, is the single largest organized political force. In any such scenario the brotherhood is expected to play a large part and that raises a whole lot of fears in the region around the world of what will be the outlook, the policy outlook of Cairo in that situation.

So it’s not really clear as to where we are going right now but the big question is what happens to the region. We have an assertive Iran given the rise of a Shiite government in Iraq. Turkey is rising. There are all sorts of concerns about whether Turkey is headed toward alignment with the Islamic world as opposed to the West. And in the midst of all of this when you have Egypt also flaring up, it’s only natural for people to say what is happening here, are we looking at a scenario of Islamic radicalization of the region.

The reality is that there are too many complexities for that to happen. A: Iranian rise is still very much in play. It is not consolidated; it’s not necessarily going to happen. There the entire US-Iranian struggle that’s taking place. And number two: Turkey is a rising power and Turkey checks the power of Iran. And if you throw Egypt into that mix, it is not necessarily that Egypt will align with Iran or Egypt will lead a new radical wave. There is the huge difference between a Shiite Iran and Sunni Egypt and all of this assumes that Egypt will at some point become a radical regime, a radical state. And by that we mean that a state is at least not aligned with U.S. foreign policy in the region, and not necessarily at peace with Israel.

We’re not saying that Egypt is about to tear up the peace treaty that it signed with Israel in 1978, but what we’re really looking at it is Egypt asserting itself both vis-a-vie the United States and Israel. And that does change a whole lot of dynamics. But that is very different from saying that there is some sort of a regional trend monolithic trend in the region that the United States and the rest of the international community has to worry about.