EGYPT ISN'T A GENUINE FRIEND OF THE UNITED STATES AND NEVER WILL BE

Israel must not overlook the threats from Egypt

Egypt is the original home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the majority of Egyptians hate Israel and would gladly discard the peace treaty with Israel if given a choice. 

 

By Joseph Puder

 

JNS

Dec 31, 2024

 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Al Alamein, Egypt, on Aug. 20, 2024.

 

In a move by the outgoing Biden administration that could only be interpreted as detrimental to Israel, the U.S. government sold Egypt some $5 billion in military hardware. The arms were offensive weapons that could only be aimed against the Jewish state. Egypt may not be Iran in terms of its hostility towards Israel and the United States, but its relationships with Iran, China and Russia have been gradually warming, while the Egyptians have been protective of Hamas in its war against Israel. Equally troubling, Egypt and Qatar have been the United States’s “go-to” countries in the Israeli hostage negotiations. Egyptian and Qatari elites and their “streets” consider Israel to be their chief enemy.

Let’s begin with the “cold peace” that Egypt initiated against Israel soon after the 1979 peace treaty that has, in recent years, turned even “colder.” In the interim, Egypt has been building up its military forces in the Sinai Peninsula, which is a violation of the Camp David Peace Accords. Egypt is also building tunnels across the Suez Canal to ferry its troops in what might be a surprise attack against Israel. Cairo has quadrupled its arms storage facilities along the canal, once again for use against Israel.

The Egyptian government mouthpiece, Al-Ahram, reported on Dec. 21 that the U.S. State Department “informed Congress it had approved the sale of $4.69 billion in equipment for 555 U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks possessed by Egypt, $630 million for 2,183 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles and $30 million in precision-guided munitions. The sale ‘will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a Major Non-NATO Ally country that continues to be an important strategic partner in the Middle East.’ ”

The State Department’s argument that the sale of weapons to Egypt is “to help improve the security of a major non-NATO ally” is ridiculous. Who exactly is threatening Egypt’s security? It is not Sudan, Libya or Ethiopia. Do President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken believe that Israel is threatening Egypt’s security? This ill-conceived idea is one that directly threatens Israel.

Geopolitically, the Middle East today resembles the historic competition of the 19th-century European powers. Egypt isn’t saddened by the damage Israel inflicted on Shi’ite Iran and Hezbollah. At the same time, Egypt would like to bring Israel down and emerge as a dominant regional power. Egypt and Iran have stepped up their diplomatic contacts since Hamas launched its war against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in Cairo recently for the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation summit (which includes Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and its most recent member, Azerbaijan). It was the first time in more than a decade that an Iranian president was in attendance in Egypt.

The incoming Trump administration needs to keep a watchful eye on the ever-closer relations Egypt is developing with China, Russia and Iran. They also need to weigh not just the recent Biden administration’s package to Egypt but that it receives $1.3 billion annually in U.S. aid and received $235 million of military aid in 2023. All of this despite Egypt’s dismal human rights record.

According to a 2021 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and cited by the Eurasia Review, Egypt spent $15 billion on weapons purchases between 2014 and 2017, 60% of which were purchased from Russia. In the summer of 2020, Egypt received five Su-35 aircraft despite a threat of sanctions by the United States. In addition to not following through on sanctions, the United States has continued to send Egypt economic and military aid.

Egypt’s ruling circles see Russia as a key foreign-policy ally even though Egypt has been one of America’s most important partners in the region for the past five decades. Cultivating good relations with Moscow is an important pillar of Egypt’s foreign policy. Egyptians believe that strategic relations with Russia will help their country balance relations with other major powers, primarily the United States and the European Union, which have criticized Egypt for its human-rights violations. Unlike his American and European counterparts, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not concerned about issues of human rights and democracy in Egypt or elsewhere.

The results of a Washington Institute poll show that a majority of Egyptians view relations with China as more important than relations with the United States. In 2014, the two countries signed a “strategic partnership agreement,” promising cooperation in the fields of defense, technology, the economy, counterterrorism and fighting cybercrimes. During ​​Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Egypt in 2016, 21 more agreements were signed, including an agreement for $15 billion of Chinese investment in various projects.

China mediated a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which then encouraged Egyptian President Fattah Abdel el-Sisi to tighten relations with China. As noted, Chinese influence in Egypt extends beyond the economic sphere.

Egypt isn’t a genuine friend of the United States and never will be. Egypt is the original home of the Muslim Brotherhood. The majority of Egyptians hate Israel and would gladly discard the peace treaty with Israel if given a choice. That same majority sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood. What happened to Bashar Assad in Syria might happen to el-Sisi. A revolution engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood that removes el-Sisi isn’t a farfetched scenario. But in the case of Egypt, billions of dollars of sophisticated U.S. arms and dollars would fall into the wrong hands.

In the Bible (Isaiah 36:6), the prophet Isaiah warns against trusting Egypt as a friend or ally. As it is written, “Behold you have depended upon the support of this splintered reed, upon Egypt, upon which a man will lean, and it will go into his palm and puncture it; so is Pharaoh the king of Egypt to all who trust in him.”

El-Sisi may not be a pharaoh, but Egypt is still a broken reed not to be trusted.