Egypt on the Brink

Will they Stay in the West or Lean to the East?

Egypt has acted strangely in this war.   They have one main internal enemy and that is the Moslem Brotherhood.   Rather than appease them, the Egyptian military (which is in fact the Egyptian government) mercilessly arrests them and often executes its leaders.  The only Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, died in a courtroom while waiting for an ambulance to come and treat him.  He was all but officially executed by the authorities.   The Moslem Brotherhood has been a thorn in the side of Egyptian leaders since its founding in 1928 and the Free Officers Movement coup in 1952 that deposed Egyptian Kink Farouk and brought Nasser to power arrested and jailed hundreds of Brotherhood members.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood and therefore has been despised by the Egyptian government of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.  As opposed to Qatar, who has supported Hamas diplomatically and financially over the years, Egypt has tried to reign them in.   In the hostage negotiations it was Egypt and not Qatar that put pressure on Hamas when they felt it necessary.   While it would be a mistake to say that Egypt has supported Israel in this war, they certainly wished for the defeat of Hamas.

Egypt has one of the biggest armies in the middle east.  It has over 3,000 tanks including over 1,300 M1A1 Abrams.   As a contrast, Israel has around 2,200 tanks.   Its Air Force sports 240 F-16’s in addition to French Mirage 2000 and older Russian fighters.   It also has a rather large Navy that includes 8 attack submarines, 12 frigates, 7 corvettes and numerous smaller craft. 

In short, Egypt has a powerful military, probably the strongest in Africa and larger than Israel’s.   Most interestingly while it has had altercations with Libya and has a longstanding feud with Ethiopia over the latter’s plan to dam parts of the sources of the Nile River, its main military training exercises have always been focused on fighting Israel.  

There has been a longstanding debate in Israel if it needs to train and prepare for war with Egypt.   To make a long story short, the same school of thought in the IDF that thought wars were a thing of the past and that Hamas and Hezbollah were deterred, were against any training to fight Egypt.   Israel and Egypt have a long border with a rather sophisticated fence meant to keep out human and drug trafficking and its border is patrolled by secondary infantry units (when I say “secondary” I don’t mean to disparage them as they proved on October 7 when the all female company brought their tanks up to save many a life and kill many a Hamas terrorist).  The main infantry and armored divisions do not rotate there and do not train to fight Egypt.   The opposing school assumes that if there is a large scale war on multiple fronts and Egypt is convinced that Israel is vulnerable, then they will attack.  

But that is neither here nor there.   The question is what Egypt’s goal is now and why is it pursuing it and why is it important?

As we stated, while the Egyptian government and military have no love loss for Israel it would be a relief for them to see Hamas disappear.   The main reason why they have closed the border – illegally – to Gazans, is because they fear an influx of Hamas terrorists.    Hamas already has connections with the Al-Qaeda presence in Sinai and this would be trouble for the Egyptians.  

Egypt has now joined the South African case at the ICC and have stopped allowing supplies to Hamas via the Rafah crossing since Israel has taken control of it.   They are threatening to recall their ambassador and there even has been talk of ending the peace treaty.   Taking everything we have said into consideration it cannot be just the slow offensive into Rafah that, alone, has caused these radical actions by a very conservative government.    Rather, they are looking at the behavior of the United States government towards Israel and are wondering how they can justify being more “pro-Israel” than the US?  They look at the behavior of the US government and its open threats against Israel, they look at the behavior of the CIA in going behind Israel’s back in order to generate a proposal on the hostages that is acceptable to Hamas but would be deadly for the hostages and they have to wonder why they need to be Israel’s friend now  (Michael Oren puts it succinctly in Is America Still Israel’s Ally?).  They also are looking in general what it means to be an ally of the US.

Let’s not fool ourselves – countries act according to their own national interests (except for Israel, that is) but US actions and a President’s words influence the actions of other countries when those national interests are in the grey area.

That is the case of Egypt regarding Israel.   Egypt gains economically by its peace treaty with Israel and so has an interest in maintaining it.  However, the economic gains have always been weighed against the natural anti-Israel feeling of both the Egyptian establishment and the people.   The Egyptian government has always been able to point to its main patron, the US, in order to tame the anti-Israel feelings.  Once that is gone – once US policy is not very different than that natural anti-Israel sentiment in the country – the scale tips away from economic national interest toward regime self-interest.

The words of a US Secretary of State, let alone a US President have consequences.  Their actions are taken even more seriously.    Egypt has been abandoned by the US in the past – during the so called “Arab Spring” when then President Mubarak’s regime was challenged and President Obama came down on the side of the protesters.  This led to the election of the above mentioned Moslem Brotherhood who was overthrown in a coup.   Egypt has been wary of its relations with the US ever since and they have become closer to both Russia and China.  According to a report by the Arab Center Washington DC .

The relationship between Egypt and China has undergone a marked expansion during the past decade by deepening their engagement through a range of economic, political, military, and cultural initiatives. This represents a strategic pivot by Egypt to diversify its external partnerships and reduce its reliance on traditional western allies, particularly in the wake of the 2013 Egyptian coup and the subsequent deterioration in relations with key partners such as the United States. Thus, in December 2014, shortly after taking office, President Sisi made an official visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping and signed a comprehensive strategic partnership (CSP) agreement.   

While the relationship with China and Russia started well before this, the behavior of the US government towards Iran and its current near abandonment of Israel has pushed Egypt away from the Western line and towards Russia and China.  Regarding Russia,  the Arab Center reports that Egypt planned on supplying rockets to Russia for its war in Ukraine – a report that Egypt has denied.   But Egypt, as opposed to Israel has been hedging its bets so as not to face betrayal by the US once again. 

While Rafah was the trigger for the change in direction of the Egyptian attitude towards Israel, when it comes down to it, Egypt is an economic basket case and needs outside help – and China and Russia seem to be more reliable allies than the US under the current administration.  Of course, being indebted to China, or Russia, is never funnel-Sisi doesn’t necessarily think that far in advance.   In addition to being part of the middle east, Egypt is also an African country and Russia and China seem to be more influential there than the US and France.  

The global order is changing before our eyes.  Egypt is a key country and the urgent question is whether it remains in the Western camp or moves toward Russia and China.   A wild card here of  course is Iran which is a Moslem rival of Egypt.   But Chinese and Russians are nothing if not opportunistic and maybe both are thinking they can balance Egypt as well as Iran.   With the US Navy all but ordered to stand down in the Red Sea against the Houthis imagine that China and Russia control the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait as well as the Suez Canal?

We have not even mentioned the movement of Turkey away from the West which would push the Black Sea and the Dardanelles eastward, too. 

In the geo-political sense, there is nothing more urgent for a regional power to pick the right side.     Free countries don’t have a lot of choices, but authoritarian ones can play both sides off each other until they are forced to choose.  Egypt is the quintessential authoritarian regional power that has three main assets:  A large army, a large population and a key geographical location centered on the control of the Suez Canal. 

While Egypt is no fan of Israel, they are careful observers of the way great powers treat their allies and their decisions over the coming years on an Eastward or Westward direction is crucial.  The Obama-Biden-Blinken treatment of Egypt over the years, its treatment of Saudi Arabia just two years ago and its treatment of Israel today, along with its appeasement of Iran, does not bode well for a western oriented decision.

Egypt’s new public anti-Israel stance both gives a wink both to the US that it now understands how it should act towards Israel and to China that it knows all too well how the current US Administration treats its longtime allies.