An hour before record-breaking fireworks welcomed 2011, millions of Arabs watched the man known as the Middle East's answer to Nostradamus make his predictions for the coming 12 months - a year in which he foresaw the region struggling with "bumps" and then what threatened to be imminent war actually end in peace.
For the 26th year, Michel Hayek, speaking live on New Year's Eve from inside a studio of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International channel, read his predictions for the Arab region and some of the major countries of the world.
"There will be an assassination that will be hailed as the crime of the century, but the world will recover ... and the year will witness a different kind of war, a war for peace," said Mr Hayek, reading from a collection of papers upon which he scribbled his visions as they come to him throughout the year.
Looking at the UAE, he said that Abu Dhabi would "steal the spotlight, and not figuratively".
A prediction that might affect the UAE indirectly involved a "major disturbance or shake up in the waters at the Strait of Hormuz".
He also paused before announcing "for the first time, and in a crazy unprecedented way, certain Arab countries will witness the plantation or establishment of several missiles stations".
Qatar and Saudi Arabia were singled out as struggling with "national security", with him warning Qatar that "certain disruptive groups" will take advantage of Qatar opening up to the world and "will use those open channels to go in and cause threats to security".
In Saudi Arabia, an emergency national meeting will witness a historic "introduction of new and young blood" into an influential position within government. Saudi Arabia will also "open a new page" in sport.
The American president Barack Obama got several mentions, with him facing situations "never faced by previous presidents", and how Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, will be "caught on camera broken and devastated".
Airports in the US will witness renewed terrorist attempts "due to unknown weak points" and Iran's streets will be packed in the way not seen since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. He predicted the Iranian opposition will lose one of its important figures.
"WikiLeaks will expose financial scandals in 2011," said Mr Hayek.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, will be associated with politics in 2011, said Mr Hayek, and he predicted a medical team surrounding Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The one-hour segment also included reflections on predictions made last year, which of them came true and which did not. One of the UAE 2010 predictions hailed as coming true is how a "major terrorist scheme will be revealed in one of the emirates", believed to be referring to the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a senior Hamas commander, in a Dubai hotel by Israel's Mossad.
It was his prediction for Qatar that made the biggest headline, when he said "Qatar to excel in sports which draws big attention to it". Last month, Qatar won its bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
rghazal@thenational.ae
