Since the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran, America's policy towards the theocratic regime in Tehran has vacillated between containment and appeasement. Whether it was the Reagan-Bush attempts to curb the regime’s export of terrorism or President Obama’s attempts at accommodation, Washington has failed to deal with a regime that has posed a serious challenge to American foreign policy over the past 37 years. In short, Washington’s goal of changing the behavior of a despotic system that by its very nature cannot be changed has failed miserably.

As President-elect Trump and his foreign policy team look at the question of “how to deal with Iran,” they have to keep one central objective in mind: Investing in the people of Iran is Washington’s best option when it comes to defending the national security interests of the United States. The Trump team and Congress must wholeheartedly and unequivocally embrace the aspirations of the Iranian people who long for freedom, economic opportunity and respect on the international stage. While the Iranian regime continues to be the most serious threat to regional security in the Middle East and a major sponsor of terrorism, the Iranian people continue to be the most serious threat to the Islamic regime and the only hope for fundamental change in Iran.

Iranians are heirs to a rich civilization that goes back 2,500 years. Despite the regime’s numerous attempts over these 37 years to submerge Iran’s identity into an Islamic-Iranian identity, for the people of Iran, their history, language and culture trump Islam. The starting point for America’s new approach to Iran is to understand that Iranians are proud of their identity and pride themselves on having produced throughout their history the likes of Cyrus the Great, mathematicians like Kharazmi, philosophers like Avicenna and poets such as Omar Khayyam. In fact, the president-elect may not know, but the words of Iran’s poet Saadi are inscribed at the entrance to the United Nations and even Thomas Jefferson, when thinking about the Declaration of Independence, drew inspiration from Cyrus the Great’s universal proclamation of human rights when he freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity.

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Sadly, President Obama’s policy of appeasement ignored this rich history, and instead he decided to openly side with a regime that has impoverished, persecuted and murdered its own people; not to mention the torture and murder of Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan. From the perspective of the Iranian people, under President Obama, America’s role as a beacon of democracy and freedom has been reduced to a peephole. Indeed, when in 2009 millions of brave Iranians took to the streets across their country and threatened to topple the regime, they asked one question of the leader of the free world: “Obama, Obama either you are with him–i.e. Ahmanejad–or with us.” At that historic moment in the history of U.S.-Iran relations, President Obama decided to take the side of the regime.

Mr. Trump can write a new chapter in U.S.-Iran relations by taking the following steps.

First, he must not “tear up” the nuclear deal with Iran. Instead, he should demand full, comprehensive and total transparency from the Iranian regime. In legal parlance, the Trump foreign policy team must treat the Iranian regime as “guilty until proven innocent.” Equally important and closely related to the aforementioned, Washington must make it clear to the mullahs in Iran that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is but one small component of America’s new approach toward Iran. Henceforth, the United States will focus on human rights violations and be a champion of religious freedom inside Iran, and it will no longer tolerate the Islamic regime’s support for terrorism, their continued efforts to undermine our allies in the region, murder of American military personnel and attempts to “wipe Israel off the map.” Under this new approach, American and European companies that do business with the regime would face stiff penalties.</s>In the spring of 2011, you gave us a memorable interview on the situation soon after the fall of Mubarak. Since then, you’ve published three books on different aspects of Egyptian society and history. Sisi has now been in power, de facto and de jure, for over three years. How far has his record in office conformed to or confounded your expectations at the point when Morsi was overthrown?

The regime is still in a state of formation. It remains fluid and we do not know yet how it will consolidate itself. There are two main issues here. One is the political institutionalization of the Sisi regime. Since Nasser’s time, Egyptian presidents have always relied upon a single party that organizes state control over trade unions, universities and the media, while also managing a vast patronage network in the bureaucracy, the legal system and the Egyptian countryside. This party had different names, from Nasser to Mubarak, but the President usually sat at its apex and governed through it. One of the consequences of the 2011 revolt has been the release of the old-regime political network from that institutional setting: the ruling party has been dissolved, and the old network has discovered a way to function without necessarily working together in a formal institutional setting. This makes them less identifiable as the source of all evils in the Egyptian political system, and also gives them greater flexibility. As a result, when the moment came for them to contemplate joining together in a single party once more, they chose not to do so. Rather, they have been operating in politics—and especially in the Egyptian parliament—through a number of smaller parties or as independents, and in the ambit of various electoral coalitions.

Sisi, on the other hand, has also broken with the pattern established since the days of Nasser, by deciding to work through the presidency alone. Nasser attempted to do this at the very beginning of his reign, boosting the role of the presidency and making it an institution in its own right, but he changed course from 1962 onwards. Sisi has said that he will not form a ruling party or be the head of a party. He believes in the idea of a presidency that will direct a cabinet of technocrats implementing his will, with directions flowing from the top; that cabinet and its executive decisions should be approved by his allies and supporters in Parliament, but not in a systematic way. Over the past three years, there has been constant tension between these two wings. Sisi attempted to reform the civil service and shrink the bureaucracy, which would reduce the power of the old-regime network within that structure; he did this by presidential decree, awaiting the approval of the new Parliament once it had been elected and had started to exercise its legislative powers. But Parliament then set about trying to stall the civil-service reform, first by rejecting it outright, then by unpicking it. There have been a number of cases, in terms of both political changes and economic policy, where it is obvious that control has been decentred, and things do not flow as smoothly as they did before. It remains to be seen what this decentring of political power will lead to. A number of people believe that it will enable them to secure greater concessions—especially if we recall that many of those in the old-regime networks are businessmen, often with regional and international alliances; they think they can be a kind of aspirant bourgeois oligarchy, working separately from the head of state, while securing concessions from Sisi over time. Another view is that Sisi will consolidate power and realize, as Nasser did, that he needs to have institutional control over the political organs if he is to govern without any kind of obstruction (a better term than opposition, I believe).

In addition to this, the second question that has to be resolved is the security aspect. At the beginning of the revolt, my analysis was that the military had been marginalized in many ways during the period leading up to 2011, but especially in terms of its role in domestic repression. Since the war of 1967, military police and intelligence had no longer been responsible for dealing with Egyptian dissidents and maintaining control on the home front; it was State Security, the Interior Ministry and the civilian intelligence services that played the major role there. After 2011, the military began to increase its role in this field, and attempted to rein in State Security; there were a few skirmishes in the first two or three months of the revolt. However, the fact that they found it very difficult to stabilize the situation to their liking led to a tactical alliance between military and security institutions, which remains in place today. For the first time since the 1960s, there has been a decentring of repression in Egypt. When people are locked up or disappear altogether, rumours abound: was this person taken to Military Intelligence or State Security? Was it the military police or the central-security riot police that were responsible? Once again, as Nasser had realized after 1967, it is quite difficult to manage things when you have two different kinds of institutions carrying out the same function of domestic repression without much coordination between them. Security becomes a much blunter instrument than is required for regimes that want to create a more stable mode of authoritarian rule. These two questions—how political power and state repression are going to be organized—remain open. This is a fluid situation which cannot last for very long.

Does it follow from this that, in comparison with the Sadat and Mubarak regimes, and indeed with much of Nasser’s time in power, the Egyptian Army now occupies a far more central and much less contested role in the system of power?

There is no question that the military has returned in force to the heart of the regime, in ways that are causing all kinds of tension. In the presidency, of course, Sisi has surrounded himself with former military men, just as Nasser did; these men left their Army posts very recently, and still have close ties with the military. In security, as we have seen, the Army has resumed its old role in domestic surveillance and repression, while in the economic field, after years of privatization and economic restructuring under the old regime, we now have a hybrid economy in which major state-run projects are largely controlled and coordinated by the military. There is still a very strong private sector in the hands of the neoliberal capitalist class that grew up under Sadat and Mubarak. So while the military is returning to these three areas—politics, security and the economy—in contrast to the situation in the 1950s, there are already powerful established interests that are not simply going to abandon these fields and hand them over to the military.

In your new book, you suggest that the security apparatus was by this time intervening in political life in a much more direct manner than before, involving itself in parliamentary management, as a kind of monitor. Is it correct to say that while the police have now lost some of their power in relation to the military, they have in fact gained in relation to the political system?

In the parliamentary elections, we saw again this competition between the presidency, now very close to the Army, and the security services. The President, on the one hand, gave his blessing to an electoral list with the kitsch name, ‘In Egypt’s Love’. He assigned leadership of this conglomerate to a former general, who has since been replaced by another former general. Its purpose was to organize the supporters of the President, an eclectic mixture of independent parliamentarians, former opposition leaders, intellectuals, journalists, and some people who had been close to the old-regime networks and were looking for a new master to serve. On the other hand, within the offices of State Security and Intelligence, other electoral zones have been organized to make sure that some of the important old-regime figures were voted back in. Many of the businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians who served under Mubarak—some even going back as far as Sadat—were returned to Parliament. The security apparatus is much closer to the old-regime networks—they have developed and evolved together over the space of three decades—than to the presidency and its heterogeneous assemblage of supporters. The people who coalesced in the ‘Egypt’s Love’ list have not worked together for very long, so all kinds of haphazard statements come out, and all manner of squabbles erupt into public view. The old-regime networks operate in a far more cohesive and systematic fashion.

Sisi now appears to have accumulated more power than his predecessors Sadat or Mubarak. What explains such a rapid ascent?

Whenever people talk about Sisi, they always mention his background in Military Intelligence, but I think this is misplaced, because he was not a career officer in this section. He was trained within the infantry and rose through it, becoming very close to Mubarak’s long-time Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. Well before the fall of Mubarak, Sisi was seen as Tantawi’s protégé and right-hand man. People referred to him as Tantawi’s surrogate son. That was how he came to be the head of Military Intelligence in January 2010, only one year before the revolt, an appointment designed to smooth his passage into the Defence Ministry when Tantawi retired. Within the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (scaf) that controlled Egypt after Mubarak was ousted, Tantawi and Sisi held a lot of sway. It’s sometimes thought that after Morsi became President in the summer of 2012, he conducted a great reshuffle of military appointments; in fact, most of the senior officers ended up in jobs they would eventually have occupied under Mubarak. Sisi was the least surprising of them. He represented, above all, institutional continuity with the Mubarak regime.

Did the responsibilities of Military Intelligence include domestic surveillance, or was it geared solely towards keeping tabs on foreign armies?

No, it was directed towards intelligence-gathering on armies outside Egypt, but it was also an important way to build alliances with foreign governments. One of the keys to Sisi’s career was his posting at one stage as military attaché to Saudi Arabia. Officers in Military Intelligence play an important role in forging links within other states over questions like weapons procurement and strategic coordination—that includes the us and the Gulf monarchies, of course.

Does that mean there is no established hierarchy of positions in the Egyptian military? Normally, the Chief of Staff would be the most important figure in the Army, while the head of Military Intelligence would be quite marginal. There was no sense among Egypt’s officer corps that Sisi was an upstart who had jumped the queue?

In an authoritarian regime, where visibility to the President and proximity to affairs of state is very important in advancing your career, becoming head of Military Intelligence moves you very close to political power, because you end up briefing the President on so many matters. Usually the individual who takes that route is making their way towards a higher position. Under Mubarak, this was Omar Suleiman, who was the czar of Military Intelligence before moving across to civilian intelligence as he became more involved in relationships with Israel and the us, playing a crucial part in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, renditions, counter-terrorism and so on. He was the figure whom Mubarak picked as his Vice-President after the uprising began in 2011. So by placing Sisi in Military Intelligence, Tantawi probably expected he would be more likely to inherit the Defence Minister role than other officers.

Still, to become Defence Minister, Sisi had first to be hastily promoted in rank to Lieutenant-General, and then, to become President, levitated to Field Marshal without ever having known a day of combat experience—did that raise no eyebrows?

There is a story about Nasser’s contemporary, General Amer, who was, I believe, the first Egyptian to receive the rank of Field Marshal. He had served very briefly and in a very minor role in the war against Israel in 1948. When Montgomery came back to Egypt to celebrate the battle of El Alamein, he is said to have been introduced to ‘Field Marshal Amer’, only to ask, ‘Which field?’ In the case of Sisi, the joke would be even more cutting. The title was, of course, designed to boost his symbolic status in the armed forces, in the risky move of becoming President of Egypt. I do not think his reluctance to do so was entirely feigned, since there was a real calculation to be made here. After the decision was taken to oust Morsi, would it be better to put in place a pliable civilian president—someone like Amr Moussa, who had been Mubarak’s foreign minister—leaving the Army as the power behind the throne, as in the erstwhile Turkish model? Under that arrangement, the smart move would be to remain in the military, because that would be the real bastion of power. There was a risk for Sisi in occupying the presidency because he would no longer be part of the Armed Forces. For sociologically speaking, as I’ve argued, once you move to another institution, you become part of that institution, and your primary concern becomes how to make your new institution successful. Of course, Sisi still maintains strong relations with the military. But he now has to think about how to strengthen his own hand and bolster his support among the Egyptian population, in ways that do not always suit the military very well. For example, the Army has probably been made to carry more of an economic burden than it would wish for, to further Sisi’s political objectives.

What of other current ornaments of the regime? Defence Minister Sobhy—how did he get there?

He was made Chief of Staff under Morsi, but very little is known about his record there. Anecdotally, he has been described as a very tough disciplinarian, someone respected and feared within the armed forces, in many ways Sisi’s equal. When the Military Council met for several hours over the decision that Sisi should resign from the Army and stand for President, Sobhy was moved up to the Defence Ministry as a counterpart. Nowadays he says nothing in public that would contradict Sisi’s policies or statements, but hearsay would have it that he occupies a position of power within the Army as strong as Sisi’s in the political system. So the relationship between Sobhy and Sisi is not at all like that of Tantawi with Mubarak. It’s more like the relationship that Abu Ghazala had with Mubarak, which is that of two power players with overlapping yet independent bases of support. Sobhy is not perceived as an obedient tool of Sisi’s, and it’s sometimes wondered whether he is entirely happy with what Sisi is doing. While he makes many public appearances, most of those are briefings of fellow officers, or inspections of military projects; he doesn’t try to reach out to the Egyptian people.

The Chief of Staff, Mahmoud Hegazy, is related to Sisi—his daughter is married to Sisi’s son. Does he owe his elevation to that?

Hegazy took Sisi’s place as the head of Military Intelligence in the same Morsi reshuffle that promoted Sisi to Defence Minister and Sobhy to Chief of Staff in August 2012. He then became Chief of Staff when Sobhy moved into the Defence Ministry and Sisi left to run for President, in the spring of 2014. This was perhaps a personal guarantee for Sisi, making it easier for him to move on—since, formally speaking, the Chief of Staff has more direct control over the field armies than the Defence Minister, so would be the key figure in the event of a coup. But in practice, the Defence Minister has ever since Nasser’s day always had more sway over the armed forces. It’s not like the situation in the us, where the Chief of Staff is the formal head of the Army, while the Secretary of Defence represents the President. In Egypt, the Defence Minister remains the pre-eminent figure in the armed forces. The Chief of Staff is still a very important position, but it’s number two.

The current Minister of the Interior, Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, comes from the innermost core of the secret police—is that new?

No, the notorious Habib el-Adly, who was Interior Minister for fourteen years under Mubarak, was from the same Special Investigations apparatus (renamed State Security in the 1970s and National Security after 2011). After Mubarak’s fall, there was an attempt to weaken the role of State Security in domestic repression, the military hoping that its own intelligence service would now play a more significant role in maintaining control. Morsi appointed Mohamed Ibrahim as Interior Minister, a figure who came from one of the very minor branches of the police, the prison wardens. There was an irony there, of course, in the Muslim Brothers selecting somebody who knew them as prisoners at close quarters, to fill that position. The move was seen as an attempt to pick someone from the periphery of the security system, who had not gone through the networks at the centre of it, though his subsequent actions proved how little difference this made. But certainly his replacement by Ghaffar, a long-standing State Security officer, is a signal of the continuing influence of the security system within the regime. Ghaffar is a much more powerful figure. Unlike his two predecessors, he is a man of few words and rarely appears in public. He is cast in the mould of Omar Suleiman, a sphinx-type figure—whenever he makes any statements, they are carefully prepared, very short and to the point. But he is far more ruthless than any of his predecessors.

How many of the current batch of provincial governors have been recruited directly from the Army?

Previously there were at least as many former police commanders serving as governors as there were Army veterans. In the last round of appointments, the balance may have tilted slightly towards the military. The number of former generals in such positions is often taken as evidence of the Army’s great political reach, but this is misleading. Those who get these jobs, whether they come from the Army or the security forces or other fields, like university administration, see them as perks acquired towards the end of a career. Once you become a governor, however, you are no longer an officer or a policeman, you occupy a political role, and start to think of yourself as a political figure. Your next thought becomes: if I succeed in the job, might I get a safe seat in Parliament, or could I become a minister? Will I be appointed as an adviser of some kind to the President, or become his special envoy in the future? Also, governors have to grapple with all kinds of technical and practical questions, and often call on the military for help with infrastructural challenges. There was a governor of Alexandria who came from an Army background but had gained a certain popularity in his new role. When he pressured the Army to be more helpful in dealing with floods that strained the sewage system, tensions arose. This led to all kinds of problems, because the military had other priorities, and saw him as a would-be politician who was trying to bolster his own position.

How would you describe Sisi’s style and search for popularity in power?

Sisi’s image changed very quickly after he became President, from a figure who was seen by many as silent and wise, holding his cards quite close to his chest, into a personality relying mostly on rhetoric, with little to offer beyond it. So popular feelings towards Sisi have thus moved from an early belief that here was someone with very concrete plans to reshape government and solve the country’s problems, if only he was given a chance, to a perception of him as a necessary evil holding the state together, lest it unravels under the weight of its various power struggles and foreign conspiracies. In short, Sisi’s image has changed from that of a man of destiny with all the right answers, to that of a very small dyke against a potentially devastating flood that might overflow the state. Against the background of what is happening in Arab countries, people worry that the state could fall apart.

What accounts for this deterioration in his standing?

Sisi improvises most of his speeches, and in trying to simplify matters to reach the ordinary citizen, often ends up with incredibly vapid platitudes that invariably invite ridicule. None of his predecessors were like that. Nasser and Sadat had a very good command of the Arabic language, which Sisi does not. They also usually had pretty clear policies that their rhetoric was meant to serve, which allowed people to understand which way the wind was blowing. Mubarak didn’t have the same grasp of Arabic, something that matters a lot to Egyptians. He usually stuck to written statements, and would very rarely go off-script; when he did, it would be to deliver some kind of informal quip or joke, then go straight back to the text. Sisi, on the other hand, seems to float on random gusts of rhetoric reflecting his mood or whims at any given moment, rather than indicating any significant change of policy, or paving the way for something new. Opening an electric power station in the south of the country, for example, he suddenly began complaining that Egypt had always enjoyed a very cold peace with Israel, called for a warmer peace, and hoped that the Israeli authorities would relay his message to its citizens. It looked as if this was going to be the announcement of some kind of diplomatic initiative or campaign to change Egypt’s relationship with Israel. But nothing came out of it—it just vanished into thin air, leaving observers bewildered.

Another example led to a small diplomatic fiasco soon afterwards. Sisi was in Sharm El Sheikh, meeting with young people, and not even on-stage, but he demanded the microphone and lectured Egyptians on how to be more patient and less greedy, then swore—invoking the divine name—that for ten years he had only had water in his refrigerator. Then he added, ‘Although I come from a very rich family’—which everyone knows he doesn’t, and Sisi often makes much of. Now if somebody said that they only had water in their fridge for a month, they would merely be lying, but if they say they only had water in there for ten years, what kind of fantasizing is that? Shortly afterwards, at a meeting of the Islamic Conference in Tunisia, the head of the Saudi delegation, referring to the Tunisian President Essebsi, misspoke and said ‘Sisi’ instead. Whereupon he joked to Essebsi: ‘This was a grave mistake, Mr President, because surely you have more in your fridge than water.’ The Egyptian Foreign Ministry demanded an apology, and Saudi Arabia replaced the head of its delegation to that particular meeting, with the result that Sisi has become an object not just of domestic, but regional and international mockery. You couldn’t imagine Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak in such a silly situation. So very quickly, between 2013 and 2016, Sisi has gone from appearing to be a serious leader, a man with solutions to the country’s problems, to becoming a source of amusement.

Has this flakiness affected the presentation of actual policies?

Yes, also leading to ridicule on the economic front. Thus in one speech he told listeners that people speak on the phone a lot, and asked every Egyptian to donate a pound to the country’s development fund each day instead of topping up their phone account, proffering some calculations on the hoof, while he was delivering the speech, of what a mighty sum that would amount to. On another occasion, he proposed that banks seize what he called ‘loose change’ from bigger transactions and use it for a development fund, with another wild impromptu calculation that this would save the country millions of pounds. Not only were these flights of fancy ridiculous, but they led some to think that Sisi had decided not to accept a loan from the imf, that he was unwilling to remove petrol subsidies or float the national currency—in other words that he was preparing, like Nasser, to create some kind of self-sufficient national economy. A few weeks later, he accepted the loan, floated the currency and scrapped the subsidies. So his rhetoric is now seen as completely divorced from policy statements, and has become a source of popular amusement. That said, many are still clutching at him as the last straw against the probability of chaos engulfing the state—as they did, in one way or another, with Nasser and Sadat and Mubarak before him. Egyptians have been asking themselves the question, ‘Who else?’, for a very long time.

How does the record of repression under Sisi compare with that of his predecessors?

The intensity of repression is in a number of ways very reminiscent of the pattern under Nasser. To begin with, there is the institutional duplication of the bodies responsible: both civilian and Military Intelligence, State Security and the police, as was the case under Nasser. Secondly, there is the thoroughness of repression, especially directed against the Muslim Brotherhood—the idea of eradicating an entire movement is the same under Sisi. Of course, the major difference is that Nasser was trying to construct an alternative that would engage the passion of ordinary people and channel Egyptian patriotism. In those days, even people on the receiving end of his repression often felt strongly committed to Nasser’s project; the Communists who were imprisoned under his regime remained lifelong Nasserites, both while they were in his jails and after they were released, under Sadat. This is an asset Sisi’s regime does not possess. The only feelings which he can appeal to are fear and insecurity—the idea that if you look at Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, state collapse is a real possibility. Under Nasser, the message was always: look at the kind of state that we’re trying to build. Under Sisi, it has been reduced to saying ‘we have to preserve whatever remains of the state, to avert complete disaster’. So he harps a lot on the strings of foreign conspiracy, social disorder and so on.

The repression of Sadat and Mubarak was quite different, as both leaders wanted to present themselves as tolerant of a limited form of democracy. Sadat did allow a certain opposition from leftists, liberals and Islamists. He would get very angry when it got out of control, but for much of the time he sought to co-opt and manipulate rather than repress them directly, only turning against them all towards the end of his regime, in the final years of his life. Mubarak played a subtler game: he believed in safety valves, in controlling rather than stifling politics altogether. He would allow protests within universities, after 2003 in particular, and also outside the campuses if they were on foreign-policy issues. There was a protest in Tahrir Square against the us invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later there were demonstrations in downtown Cairo against the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006. On the other hand, he would clamp down harshly on anything like the youth movement of 6 April 2008 that tried to link up with factory workers. But he did allow a number of private media channels, talk shows and newspapers, and a certain measure of controlled criticism. Civil society became a proxy for political activism for those seeking change under Mubarak, when all kinds of groups sprang up. Even if they were sometimes closed down or lost their funding, it was possible for them to exist.

The lesson that the regime learnt in 2011—not confined to Sisi as President—was that Mubarak had been wrong to think that he could manage opposition and control dissent in this fashion. Rather, it was necessary to close down all forms of opposition, whether in civil society, the media, the universities or anywhere else. So in contrast to the situation under Sadat or Mubarak, there are no longer any safety valves. And the forms of repression are not only far more intense than under Sadat or Mubarak, but in effect probably much harsher than under Nasser, because the regime offers no positive vision for people to engage with.

In quantitative terms, overseas estimates suggest that there are now about 40,000 people in Egyptian jails. Would the figures have been comparable under Nasser?

Yes, but you can never be sure of the exact number because of the lack of transparency. There have rarely been any executions, under either of these regimes. Many people have received death sentences, but few of these will be carried out. Usually they are commuted to life imprisonment. There are also many people in exile in various places, and you can’t get your sentence commuted in absentia.

Few formal executions, but the largest massacre in modern Egyptian history, with the slaughter in putting down the Morsi regime. What of torture?

Torture has been systematic in the treatment of detainees in Egypt since the time of Nasser. There has been a shift over the years, however. Under Nasser, it was usually limited to political dissidents, it wasn’t applied to citizens involved in criminal cases. But from the last days of Sadat, and certainly under Mubarak, the regular police have also been brutalizing citizens rounded up for even trivial criminal offences. Torture is becoming more and more the modus operandi of the whole security system—even if he wanted to, I don’t think the President now has much ability to control it, short of carrying out a complete overhaul of the security apparatus. In the us, the White House and its advisers could discuss the interrogating techniques to be employed, and a record was kept of what was being done in Bagram or Guantánamo and by whom, with some capacity to allow or disallow it. In Egypt, on the other hand, torture has been part of the political culture for so long and has become so diffuse that I doubt it can be rooted out via formal presidential directives; it requires a radical change of policy.

Is the scale of disappearances under Sisi an innovation?

They occurred under Nasser, too. There was an expression for it, people would say that somebody had ‘gone beyond the sun’, meaning that no one knew what had happened to them, what they might have been accused of, whether they were being held in an official prison or not. When the regime was done with them, they would be dropped off on a dark street corner—with instructions not to speak about where they had been, or they would be in trouble. So this is not something entirely new.

If the police had gone too far in torturing a prisoner and killed them, wouldn’t it be convenient to act as if they had simply disappeared?

That makes sense, though I’m not aware of such cases. People might hope that their friend or relative who has disappeared would be alive in prison somewhere, and keep that hope for ten or twenty years.

In the economic field, there was no sharp neoliberal turn at the beginning of Sisi’s rule; he even increased some public subsidies. But the conditions attached to the imf loan this autumn include the full neoliberal package: privatization of industries, cuts to subsidies, a currency float, a balanced budget and so on. The imf says, ‘We will give you the money, but only in tranches, provided you actually implement all of this.’ Does Sisi’s acceptance of this programme indicate a kind of desperation, a sense that the regime had no other choice because the economic situation was so dire?

The institutions of the old regime have learnt differing economic lessons from the 2011 revolt. The presidency—that is to say, Sisi himself and his entourage of technocrats and henchmen—believes that Mubarak’s fall was partly caused by his neoliberal restructuring of the economy, which alienated a large section of the middle classes and risked turning the lower classes into a powder keg that could explode at any time. For them, the way to prevent another uprising was to roll back the restructuring and privatizations and return to a position where the state—meaning the presidency—has direct control over the economy. The old-regime network, on the other hand, drew the opposite conclusion. For them, 2011 disrupted a successful process; the trickle-down economics of neoliberalism had been improving things, and if only Gamal Mubarak had succeeded his father, in a few years many people would have seen that. Interestingly, when you speak to members of the Egyptian middle class, people argue on both sides of this question: some will say that things were working better under Mubarak, if only we had been a bit more patient, while others will contend that we were heading towards an abyss.

Sisi’s problem was finding the money to implement his initial economic line. If he had reflected on the experience of Nasser, he would have seen how much weaker his own position was. Nasser could nationalize many of the assets of the Egyptian landowners and bourgeoisie, not to speak of those of foreigners, because much of the wealth of the upper class was in land, which was immobile and could be confiscated. And with the Cold War in the background, he could also rely on the Soviet Union to finance some of his projects. Sisi has none of these advantages. The assets of Egypt’s businessmen in today’s global financial capitalism are much more elusive and transferable. There is no Cold War rivalry that would allow him to play off one great power against the other. He went to Russia and China and tried to solicit investment from those countries, but not much was forthcoming. He soon realized that the only way to draw upon the assets of the private sector would be to persuade them to cooperate. So Sisi’s first phase in power was marked by a series of attempts to shame businessmen into patriotic donations, or blackmail them with threats to revoke their permits or deprive them of access to government contracts, combined with pleas along the lines of: ‘You have gained so much, which destabilized the regime. It’s time to give something back.’ He wanted them to invest in a fund called Long Live Egypt, which was to be run by the public banks. But the contributions from businessmen were peanuts, and Sisi grew increasingly frustrated. The fund still exists, but it hasn’t garnered much money.

Sisi also tried to appeal directly to small and medium businesses, and citizens who had some savings. One way of doing this, he thought, was through public subscriptions to fund projects like the expansion of the Suez Canal. But he soon discovered that these people were not as generous with their cash as they might be with their patriotic sentiments. So he had to offer them the highest rate of return available on the market—a very expensive way of raising money. If finance could not be obtained from inside Egypt, or from international powers like Russia or China, the next port of call would have to be Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. But since the price of oil on the world market has collapsed, these countries no longer have as much cash to spare as they did before; Saudi Arabia, which is now facing the prospect of a budgetary deficit, is even thinking of raising visa charges for the pilgrimage to Mecca. They also have other external commitments. The Gulf States are much more interested in playing a military role than they were in the time of Nasser. Saudi Arabia is leading the war in Yemen, instead of financing war by proxy as it did under Nasser, and is spending a lot of money to obtain high-tech weapons from the us and the uk. Qatar is participating in the wars in Syria and Libya, with air strikes and so on. These countries want to use their remaining oil revenues to project their own power in the region. Egypt is getting some cash, but it’s not coming as thick and fast as Sisi hoped. So the money required to finance any large-scale projects in the country remains in the hands of the Mubarak-era business elite. Egypt receives very little foreign investment, and whatever capital does come in usually takes the form of partnerships with these businessmen—Mubarak used to take them on his travels to the us and Europe, to strike deals there. Foreign investors aren’t keen on Sisi’s offer of partnerships with the Egyptian military. They want to deal with the private sector. Sisi’s agreement with the imf and acceptance of their conditions comes after a series of failures in his bid to re-establish state control over the economy.

Sisi now faces an acute economic crisis—shortages of basic commodities like sugar and rice, very high inflation, ongoing and impending cuts to subsidies on essentials. How is this being perceived in Egypt?

The old-regime network believe that once Sisi gives up any attempt to roll back Mubarak’s neoliberal restructuring, they can go back to business as usual and everything will fall into place: the Cabinet will once more take its cue from the market, rather than from technocrats under the President’s direction; foreign investment will resume; the currency will be stabilized. For them, Sisi’s acceptance of the imf loan is a welcome surrender that will allow things to return to normal in the near future. But for those who believe it was this very restructuring that helped bring Mubarak down, Sisi’s new approach risks driving the country towards the disaster of a much more radical and violent revolt. Under Mubarak, there were at least all these safety valves: some kind of influence and presence of opposition parties, the Muslim Brotherhood, civil society and the media. Tahrir Square was largely a rebellion of the middle class—workers and peasants weren’t the driving force behind it. But now the much more thorough repression of dissent in the middle class, and of course its disillusionment with the revolution and everything that accompanied it, means that a second revolt would likely take the form of a rising of the lower classes, of the kind widely dreaded for a very long time—one focused on social justice and the distribution of wealth, rather than political democracy and dignity.

This is where the military comes in. If Sisi recognizes that the imf loan has only alleviated the problem in the short term, by injecting a limited amount of foreign capital into the economy which will be absorbed within three or four years, and picks up on warning signs of a breakdown in the social order, what is he going to do? Some think that he would then use the Army to establish a much tighter control over the economy, including the confiscation of private assets, money held in bank accounts and so on. There have been a number of smaller episodes indicating that something like this is not impossible. The price of sugar has increased in recent months, as it disappeared from the market. The Army then raided warehouses and discovered that merchants were hoarding stocks of it, which they confiscated. They also, however, raided factories, including Edita, one of Egypt’s largest food processors, which was new, seizing enough sugar to last Egyptians for three months. When there was a shortage of milk formula for babies at the end of the summer, the Army again intervened directly, securing supplies of the formula somewhere and issuing it directly to needy mothers. Similar things have happened with gas cylinders. So this is one possible scenario if the crisis is seen to have spread to the whole economy.

In addition to the loss of revenue from falling oil prices, Egypt has presumably taken a considerable hit from the decline in tourism since 2011.

Yes. Traditionally, there have been three main sources of foreign currency for Egypt: the Suez Canal, oil and gas production, and tourism. All three have gone down considerably. Mubarak had a project under wraps for the Canal to be transformed into an industrial hub, where ships would come with unfinished products to be assembled in factories and then re-exported. The scheme was modelled to some extent on Dubai. When Morsi came to power, he wanted to pursue this and sought assistance from Qatar, causing an uproar because of the implications for sovereignty over the Canal. Under Sisi, the Canal was broadened at its narrowest point—where only one-way traffic was possible, obliging ships to wait for several hours to pass—and a small side canal was built. Critics argued that it was by no means clear that ships would be willing to pay higher tariffs to avoid the queues, at a time when traffic in the Canal was anyway decreasing with the recession in global trade and fall in oil prices. The real gains would come from creating the manufacturing and financial-services hub envisaged in the scheme, not from this costly expansion. But Sisi thought of it as a grand national project, recalling the time of Nasser, that would fire people’s imaginations, and insisted it be completed within a year, instead of three as originally planned, so all of the earth-moving equipment hired with foreign currency had to be doubled. That soaked up a large part of Egypt’s foreign-currency reserves. Sisi’s hype in fact harked back to Khedive Isma’il, who had commissioned Verdi’s Aïda to celebrate the original opening—he put on another performance of the opera, trumpeting the slogan, ‘Egypt is being happy’. The media were bombarded with talk about the great benefits that would accrue to the Egyptian economy, with impressive-looking graphs bandied about on television.

For Sisi doesn’t just want control of the economy, he also wants to get Egyptians emotionally invested in great (albeit resource-wasting) projects. So he also restarted a scheme that had been abandoned by Mubarak, to create a new Nile Delta, this time in the south, towards Sudan, with a whole new community moving to live there. There was a lot of rhetoric about this project, but nothing happened. Then there is the project of a new capital city. Mubarak had thought of moving government ministries to a new administrative centre with few residents, as a response to the appalling traffic congestion in Cairo. Sisi is going ahead with this plan, but branding it as a new capital in a grander sense, to be located just on the outskirts of Cairo, even though the city expands very quickly. The final big project is intended to substantially increase Egypt’s agricultural output by cultivating a huge area of the Western Desert, close to Libya, drawing on underground water—although if the water has been there all along, why wasn’t it used by Sadat, or Nasser, or indeed Muhammed Ali, for that matter? Sisi is surrounded by yes-men, who all agree that it’s a great idea to build greenhouses in the middle of the desert. The larger picture is of Sisi using whatever funds are available for these mega-projects in the hope of creating sustainable employment at a time when people are really struggling to obtain essential goods.

Are private businesses being dragooned into supporting these schemes?

Sisi puts the Army’s own companies in charge, they then subcontract the work to private firms. This forces the private sector to help him, because the game of allocating contracts has become very important as a source of power: ‘If you start giving me trouble, you’re not going to get a piece of this new project.’ It has also been used to fragment the private sector, dividing a particular job between three or four big firms and ten or twenty small ones, so that everybody gets a slice. I should add here that many people do praise the military companies for being hard task-masters, getting things done in time and making sure the work observes certain standards of efficiency and quality.

If, as you say, the business class remains cautious, and hasn’t rallied with any great enthusiasm to these projects of the regime, what is the attitude of the Egyptian middle class, insofar as one can generalize about such a heterogeneous layer?

The middle class was suffering under Mubarak. Proponents of the success story of Egyptian neoliberalism claim that while there may have been some pain, upward mobility in that class was a real possibility, with more private-sector companies and more opportunities to move up the ladder. This may have been true for the upper-middle class, bankers, lawyers and so on, but it was not so for teachers or civil servants who had no such routes to betterment and were stuck where they were. Nasser’s middle class was largely state-nurtured, in the schools, the universities and the government bureaucracy. These people have been squeezed, and now more than ever because of rising prices. Everyone suffers, of course, but the government keeps a close watch on basic commodities that are important for the lower classes—sugar, bread, rice, petrol, gas—and will intervene to hold their costs down. The upper-middle class, on the other hand, can cut back quite heavily on luxury goods without touching anything that is essential in their consumption. But for those in between, there are so many things that they have become used to which the government doesn’t keep tabs on, but which affect their everyday life, and whose prices are soaring—soap, shampoo, radios, not to mention taxi fares. On the other hand, when you speak to people from the middle class, what they often seem above all to be concerned about is the stability of the state. People lower down the social ladder have alternative structures of support in the black economy, or the administration of justice and arbitration of conflict by local strongmen in popular neighbourhoods. As a result, they’re not as dependent on the state and its infrastructure as the middle class. If that should come tumbling down, middle-class people believe that they will find life impossible. If you speak to them of revolution, of removing the President or subverting the regime in any way, the first image that comes into their mind is the chaos in Syria, Libya or Yemen. How long will that remain their uppermost concern—simply being able to go to work and come back home safely? How long will they be able to identify themselves as belonging to a middle class at all? These are questions that are going to be posed.

In its propaganda, the regime doesn’t just invoke the spectre of conflict in neighbouring countries, it also plays up the domestic war on terror. How seriously is this taken by ordinary people—do they really think there is a threat from terrorists prowling the streets?

On the one hand, the regime says that terrorist attacks, insurgencies in Sinai and the Western Desert, are so serious a danger that it must be Egypt’s number one priority to crush them, and we can’t allow any political disagreements to rock the boat until we have done so. But in the same breath, it encourages foreign tourists and businessmen to come to Egypt, insisting that everything is under control. This doublethink is mirrored in popular attitudes. People will say that we can’t have any demonstrations because terrorism is such a serious problem and the country might fall apart, but then they will ask why tourists aren’t coming from Russia or Britain—isn’t terrorism a problem everywhere?

Initially Sisi appeared to enjoy very high levels of middle-class support, judging by all sorts of indicators. You think that has now faded?

Yes. If you compare Sisi to Erdoğan, for example, who was the head of a party that assembled a real social bloc behind a clear platform—economic, cultural, geopolitical—he never had that kind of consistent support. He doesn’t have a specific group of people whose interests he caters to. What he does have is a lot of people who are scared that without him things would be worse.

Would it be right to think that after staging some quite significant strikes in the last years under Mubarak, the Egyptian working class—that is, workers employed in the formal sector—has gone quiet under the new regime?

It has been harshly repressed. Broadly speaking, there were two kinds of strike under Mubarak. Some took place in the private sector, when Mubarak’s last Cabinet of businessmen would intervene to come up with a settlement more or less acceptable to employers, workers and trade unions alike, while others involved white-collar workers such as teachers, when the government would raise their wages or renegotiate their contracts. These were allowed. Those which were not, and attracted severe repression, affected the old Nasserite industrial projects, the big factories like Mahalla. Sisi, on the other hand, made it clear at the outset that no strikes would be tolerated at this time of crisis for Egypt, when conspiracies were everywhere, and the state was on the edge of collapse. So strikes are much more harshly and uniformly repressed than they were under Mubarak, and those that do occur are not very widely reported. Before, the government would want to show its willingness to intervene and broker a compromise; now there are just rumours of a stoppage here or there. People who have their ears closer to the ground may have more accurate data on strike rates, but they have certainly been less frequent than under Mubarak.

How tight is current censorship of print, broadcast and social media?

Very tight indeed. Most influential media presenters, journalists and social activists have been chased into exile, or at least the comfort of their own homes. Those who have not been taken off the air now steer away from serious political commentary in favour of celebrity gossip. The same is true of print media. You still have two important independent newspapers, but they are harassed and intimidated. The owner of Al-Masry Al-Youm, for example, was detained for having an unlicensed weapon; he was released within 48 hours, but a clear message had been sent. These papers still try to provide some kind of independent coverage, but it’s much more subdued than before. Legislation has now been passed to bring social media under the surveillance of the state-security agencies. This was always the reality, of course, but now it’s enshrined in a law that makes people accountable for expressing anything held ‘subversive’ in these forums. The situation has completely changed from Mubarak’s time, when so long as certain red lines were not crossed, people could basically say what they liked.

Presumably the regime doesn’t yet have the resources to monitor social media to the extent that, say, the Chinese state does?

Perhaps not, but what matters is not so much how comprehensive surveillance has become, but rather the message it transmits, which makes people censor themselves out of fear. The tweets that attract the attention of the authorities probably circulate very rapidly, so that a state-security officer would come to hear about them without much effort. I don’t think they’re especially worried about networks forming under the radar; they want to send a message to activists and celebrities—people they have under surveillance anyway—not to be as outspoken as they were before; and that, of course, is working.

The Economist has famously described Sisi as the most pro-Israeli ruler in Egyptian history. Would you assent to that judgement?

Sisi is very inconsistent in his foreign policies in general, but especially when it comes to Israel. On the one hand, Israel has allowed the Egyptian Army a greater presence in Sinai, where Sadat’s peace deal had largely barred it, in order to combat the insurgency there. That has involved closer coordination between the two states than before. The relationship between Israel and the Saudis has also grown dramatically in the last few years, with the first big Saudi delegation visiting Israel (billed at home as a delegation from civil society). The Saudi regime is Sisi’s main regional ally, so there is a kind of triangular relationship there. He has also essentially severed relations with Hamas in Gaza, after accusing it of playing a sinister part in the events of 2011. These are all relations and policies inherited from Mubarak, but they have been accentuated under Sisi. On the other hand, there has been no outright change of policy as such. Mubarak flew to Israel for Rabin’s funeral, and when Peres died, people were looking to see if Sisi would attend his funeral, but he didn’t. He hasn’t changed the Egyptian security doctrine, which holds that Sinai is important because of the ‘threat from the east’. Israel and Turkey have had troubled relations in recent years, and Sisi was hoping to take advantage of that, but then Erdoğan settled his dispute with the Israelis. The lesson seemed to be that Israel must have cared more about Turkey than about Egypt, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been open to Erdoğan’s overtures, at a time when Sisi was trying to isolate and marginalize Turkey.

There are many other inconsistencies in Sisi’s foreign policy, if it can be called that. He presents Russia as his greatest international ally, and Saudi Arabia as his most important regional backer, but Moscow and Riyadh are engaged in a cold war in the Middle East over the Syrian conflict and other questions. In the un Security Council, the Saudis presented one motion denouncing Assad, the Russians another essentially backing him, and Egypt ended up supporting both! This led to a confrontation with the Saudis, who suspended oil shipments to Egypt for a few months. In the same fashion, Sisi is trying to be very close to Russia and very close to the us at the same time. He now has great hopes that Trump’s victory will take care of this, since Trump is supposed to be close to Putin, and has commented that the Egyptian military saved the country from falling under Islamist rule. But in that case, the whole idea of balancing against the us would go away, because if you have a good friend in Trump, why would you need Russia or China to balance against Washington? What emerges from all this is that Sisi really has no concrete set of policies at all, whether economic or geopolitical. He just emits platitudes about Egypt’s independence, the role of the Army, patriotism and so on, and follows them in whimsical directions. One could try to rationalize some of Sisi’s policies, but it would be futile to try and impose any coherent rationality on his path of rule, because he doesn’t have one yet.

On the other hand, Sisi has been welcomed with open arms by every major European leader. Renzi, in particular, rushed to Cairo to embrace him, Hollande arriving somewhat later. Merkel and Cameron were scarcely less warm. While Washington was keeping its distance, he was fêted in Rome, Paris, Berlin and London. Is this regarded as a great success for Sisi at home?

The relationship with Italy was very important for Sisi; Italian companies have been in Egypt negotiating deals, especially concerning the new gas field that’s been discovered in the Mediterranean. He considered Renzi a personal friend. But none of these relationships has really prospered. Renzi was put on the spot by the murder of the Italian student activist, Giulio Regeni, which caused an uproar in Italy. According to the Italian authorities, the Egyptian government did not fully cooperate in the joint investigation of his killing, brushing it aside as an individual case, an unfortunate accident of some kind, for which Egypt could not be held responsible. Unsurprisingly, the prospect of a great economic partnership between Egypt and Italy was put on hold. With France, there was the EgyptAir flight from Paris which crashed in the Aegean, Egypt immediately claiming there had been a security breach at the French end, when the evidence to date suggests a technical failure in the plane, rather than an act of terrorism. That caused a lot of tension with France. Then the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, complained that Britain was not encouraging its tourists to visit Egypt, despite all the efforts that the Egyptian authorities had made to comply with airport security procedures, implying there was something malicious about their attitude, while a Member of Parliament very close to Sisi claimed that the British Embassy in Cairo had ceased to be a regular diplomatic mission, instead becoming a nest of conspiracy and subversion.

You could add the debacle of Sisi’s joint press conference with Merkel in Berlin, when they had to scuttle quickly from the room when a protestor from the floor shouted against torture in Egypt.

Yes, that was another memorable incident, among so many.

Looking at the various oppositions to the regime, how have the Muslim Brothers responded to the overthrow of Morsi and the pitiless repression of their movement since? A central theme of your remarkable ethnography, Inside the Brotherhood, is the religious determinism of the Ikhwan—the belief that since God is on our side, we can wait. Victory is bound to come, as we can see from our growing numbers and economic success; political success cannot fail to follow. You show the blindness to which this mind-set led and the disaster that overtook it. In many ways your description recalls the outlook of Puritan militants in mid-seventeenth-century England, filled with a confidence that they were fighting God’s cause that made them a tremendous battlefield force, but collapsing with the doubly demoralizing blow of the Restoration, which came not just as a political defeat they never expected, but as a sign that God didn’t really want them to win after all. Providence had deserted them, and the tradition never recovered. The Brothers were not revolutionaries, but do they risk a similar fate? How have they reacted to their quick and dizzying success of 2012, followed by the utter debacle of 2013?

The English Puritans were much more messianic, believing that their victory would be the last big push towards the end of time, ushering in a Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So for them, the restoration of business as usual was crushing. The Muslim Brotherhood’s version of religious determinism has not been like this. It involves a cyclical conception of history. It’s in the nature of things for people’s faith to weaken and become corrupt again; and, when this happens, the believing few must come together and spearhead another righteous movement. So the fate of the virtuous is to rise and fall. When you talk to the Brotherhood, they take great pride in the fact that they’ve always been repressed, and they always come back.

The second difference, of course, is that the Puritans were not so organized: they had their preachers and lay scholars of religion, but at best they formed a network that was nothing like as formalized a structure as the Ikhwan, with its careful recruitment, surveillance, training and hierarchy—indoctrination, climbing the ranks, and so on. The Muslim Brotherhood is essentially an ideological organization, which came together not in the course of a civil war like the English Puritans and their New Model Army, but under a very stable regime during the inter-war period, in King Fuad’s time. That has given them a much greater power of resistance. When defeat befell the Puritans, each of them was left to their own devices in trying to make sense of it, whereas when a setback hits the Brothers, the upper echelons of the organization quickly find an explanation which they make sure trickles down to the ordinary members. Of course, not everyone will be convinced by these official justifications, but because there is an organized way to interpret events and disseminate this interpretation, there is much greater resilience.

If that’s a general feature of the Brotherhood, what particular explanation has its leadership offered of the fiasco of Morsi’s presidency?

The reason why the Brotherhood didn’t completely collapse is this. They had always made it very clear that their coming to power should crown the conversion of a great many Egyptians to their moral community—there might still be opposition from minorities here and there, from a few hardened secularists and anti-Muslim intellectuals, but such opposition would be relatively insignificant. So most of the work of the Brothers was community-focused, to convert people to their world-view. That remained their position at the beginning of the revolt in 2011, and in the weeks and months leading up to it. We don’t want to be part of this, we’re waiting for the right moment, and this is not it. So instead of placing their faith in the protestors, whom they reluctantly allowed their members to join on the third day of the 2011 revolt, Brotherhood leaders negotiated with the regime. In infamous talks between Morsi and Omar Suleiman, an informal deal was reached: you promise to withdraw your members from Tahrir Square, and we allow you to form a political party. For the Brothers, this was the right moment to penetrate society more deeply, not to take down Mubarak. But then Mubarak was overthrown anyway, and first parliamentary and then presidential elections were scheduled.

Still the Brotherhood made it very clear to their members: this is not the right time for us to come to power. Therefore we are not going to aim for a plurality in Parliament, nor are we going to field a presidential candidate. We’re going to be the minor partner in any arrangement, while we continue to build on our communal networks, to penetrate society ever more thoroughly. Then they suddenly changed their minds, and decided they were going to dominate Parliament and run for the presidency. So when things subsequently went south for them, it was very easy for many people in the organization to say: it’s clear this was not the right time, we moved prematurely. Some of our leaders were tempted, or tricked. They’re good people, but in their enthusiasm they got ahead of themselves. In the kindness of their hearts, they led us astray.

Why then did the leadership of the Brotherhood suddenly change its mind and go for all-out power?

A critical event was the referendum the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (scaf) organized in March 2011, just a month after Mubarak stepped down, on an essentially meaningless issue, whether to modify the Constitution or to call a convention to produce a new one. The liberal and left opposition, without exception, insisted that the country needed an entirely new constitution. The Brotherhood and the Salafists went all-out to keep the existing constitution—originating under Sadat—with a few amendments. The result was irrelevant, because the military scrapped the old constitution anyway. But the Brothers managed to persuade over 70 per cent of the voters, so it became clear to the military that they had far more sway on the street than the secular revolutionaries who had brought down Mubarak, yet seemed incapable of much organization once they had done so. For scaf, the priority was to bring the street under control, so it decided to start working with the Brotherhood to stabilize the country. Relations between the two suddenly became quite cosy. This was the moment when the Brotherhood put its bets on the military and the security institutions, believing that with these it could marginalize and place under a shadow all these liberals and leftists, in a division of power in which the military and security systems have the upper hand, while the Brothers would continue to build up their strength and extend their hold in society even more impressively. Meanwhile, they went along with every important military decision, including many aimed at them, while pocketing victory in the parliamentary elections of November 2011 and January 2012.

Once the presidential election came up in 2012, there were three types of candidates. Two came with support from the revolutionary camp: Hamdeen Sabahi, a secular Nasserite, and Aboul Futuh, a breakaway former Brother. Two were from the old regime: Ahmed Shafiq, a former Air Force commander and Prime Minister under Mubarak, and Amr Moussa, Mubarak’s former Foreign Minister. The military didn’t want anyone from either of these camps, so they were left with the Brotherhood in the middle. They had been working with the Ikhwan for a year in a partnership for which they set the rules. But they saw it as a dangerous partnership, and took measures to ensure that it wouldn’t rebound on them. First, they excluded the Brother’s effective leader, Khairat el-Shater, from running for the presidency, on the ludicrous pretext that he was still charged with escaping from prison under Mubarak, but actually because they feared him as a shrewd and cunning leader. In his place the Brothers had to deliver someone less ruthless, who proved to be the suitably incompetent Morsi. Second, the scaf suddenly dissolved Parliament on the eve of the presidential elections, reckoning that if we’re going to give the top job to the Brotherhood, we don’t want them to control the Legislature as well. Third, they created a new National Security Council dominated by officers, with great sway in deciding all national issues, rather like the National Security Council in Turkey of old. The Brotherhood agreed to all these precautions taken against them.

In the event, Morsi won the election by a tiny margin over Shafiq. It’s worth noting subsequent evidence of how worried the military were at the prospect of a return of the old regime. For when Morsi was ousted in 2013, in an uprising in which Mubarak-era networks played a huge part, the cry went up that Shafiq should now be installed as the rightful president, since he had actually won the election—the courts would show Morsi had never been president in the first place. Shafiq was by then in exile in the Emirates. Not only did the military decline to make him president, ex post facto, but he remained in exile in fear of imprisonment should he return. Likewise Moussa, who had done sterling service for the military in helping to rewrite the Constitution, and thought he was in line for a key post, but was completely marginalized.

The military didn’t take long to dispose of Morsi. How would you describe the conglomerate that toppled him?

From the start the liberal and leftist forces that made the revolution tried to explain to the Brotherhood: if you work with us, together—with your organization and our enthusiasm and legitimacy—we have a chance of finally undoing this repressive order. The Brotherhood first snubbed them, and then patronized them, preferring to work with the military and the security, both of which were repressing the revolutionaries. So an incredible rearrangement of forces ensued. The old-regime network in the political system, with its staying power in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the media and so much else, took up with the revolutionaries, whom the Brothers had discarded, and used their legitimacy to launch an all-out attack on Morsi, while the Brotherhood, until the very last moment, believed the military and the security would not abandon them. Famously, in his last more or less dignified speech, Morsi rejected any idea that the Army could turn against him—don’t dream of that, he said, these are men of gold, I know them, and they are loyal. The Brotherhood dug its own grave by throwing in its lot with those who held power against those who seemed powerless, not thinking that power would be turned against them.

Has there been no questioning within its ranks since then?

The organization, despite massive repression, is still intact, and its official narrative is that their mistake was that they were not confident or revolutionary enough. But two groups have left it. A small minority has done so in disillusion, denouncing its leaders as charlatans—God was never on their side. These are a scattering of repentant voices, heard in the media and employed by the regime to expose the Brotherhood. Another group has taken the militant route: the leadership gave up too early: this is the moment of divine empowerment, but it’s going to be violent, requiring a civil war separating the people of God from the people of Satan. But I think the great majority of the Brotherhood have accepted the official message: ‘We were wrong; we should have partnered with the revolutionaries, but the military tricked us into various mistakes that we shouldn’t have made.’ Their message to the people at large is: ‘Accept us back and you’ll find us the same people you knew under Mubarak and under Sadat: your friendly neighbours, your good teachers and your upright prayer leaders.’ This message will gain greater acceptance the more unpopular the regime becomes.

A corollary question: how Egyptian-specific is the passive religious determinism you describe in your book on the Brotherhood—Hamas doesn’t seem to conform to it, still less the Syrian Brotherhood that rose against the elder Assad in 1982?

This outlook is very Egyptocentric, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant to other countries. Once any ideology or theory travels, of course, it changes; but something of it remains. In the case of the Brotherhood, what this means is that the ideology has remained as close to its roots, and the organization as faithful to the ideology, as possible. But in other contexts, it shifted. In Egypt, the cradle of the doctrine was around Ismailia, a very Westernized part of the country that was a hub of British and French influence: it was driven by the sense that Egypt was moving away from the values of a traditional community, becoming too Westernized and modernized. In the Gulf, in Kuwait, or even in Jordan—places where the monarchy, traditional society, tribal balance, religious belief were all intact—it could not acquire the same social-transformative impetus. The idea that we all risk becoming aliens, foreigners in our own land, and need to rectify that, didn’t work there. On the other hand, in countries like Tunisia or Syria, where there was absolutely no regime tolerance extended to Islamists and they were removed from the scene very early on, they could not delude themselves into believing they were gradually winning over society, that it would just take time. Their only chance of advance lay in coming to power at the top, if necessary in alliance with other forces.

Sudan would be yet another case: a much more traditional society than Egypt, a strong Sufi element to it—comparable to the strong Salafi element in the Gulf. So there Islamists could only seize power with a coup, as Turabi and Bashir did. Then there is the case of Hamas. Originally, it was the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, with a very similar pitch to the Brotherhood in Egypt: ‘We lost Jerusalem, we lost our land, because we moved away from our faith, and we need to work gradually, over the long run, to recover them.’ That’s why Israel bore down much less hard on them than on Fatah, even helping them at the latter’s expense. But then the Intifada exploded in ’87, and they suddenly realized that you cannot really continue your social project under a military occupation, and if you lose your standing in violent resistance, you will be marginalized. So Hamas emerges as the armed wing of the Brotherhood in Palestine.

It’s necessary to look comparatively at this range of experiences, but also to remember two things. The first is the importance of studying the Egyptian case, since the Brotherhood was formed in Egypt, the largest Muslim country with such a movement, and the roots of its ideology lie in Egypt. The second is the common conviction of every Islamist that if you create a society of good Muslims, divine blessings will follow. In time that can become more a matter of personal faith than everyday politics. Had the Brotherhood stayed in power for some time in Egypt, and had to deal with the practicalities of government, my guess is that this is what would have happened. But since they didn’t, they remain as close as possible to their original ideology, because they’ve never really been tested in government, as other Islamist movements have.

The implication of what you’re saying is that the Brotherhood has not actually been destroyed in Egypt—it remains, latently, still a significant force?

Yes. Also, of course, its contingent of exiles in Qatar, in Turkey, in the us, in London, in other European capitals, remain an important reserve—because remember, under Nasser, something similar happened: those who escaped his repression found their way to Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait, some of them to the us, and they came back in the seventies. So this time, too, there are leaders who managed to get away, as well as the leaders who are in jail, which gives them a certain legitimacy amongst the younger generation. If they weren’t in prison, they would have been taken more to task by ordinary members, but since they are in chains, the common attitude is: ‘Can’t you see how much they’re suffering? We can’t add to their burdens.’ So, as under Nasser, mass imprisonment helps freeze rather than destroy the movement.

Of course one cannot predict the future, but if the past provides any clue it is that Brothers only prosper when they make themselves serviceable to the regime in some way. King Farouk, Egypt’s last monarch, needed them to bolster his religious credentials and undermine liberals and constitutionalists, and then banned them. Nasser used them to carry out his coup and undercut liberals and monarchists, and then sent them to prison. Sadat released them to help him destroy leftists and Nasserists, before turning against them. Mubarak allowed them to operate once more to promote his image as the last best hope for a secular Egypt against a Brotherhood takeover, before rooting them out of Parliament and imprisoning their leaders. And finally, scaf used them against both the revolutionaries and the old regime before discarding them. What this all means is that if the Brothers manage to fight their way back to the political arena against the will of the new ruler, it would certainly be a first in their eight-decade history. They will most likely return when Sisi or one of his successors finds some use for them.

In using the term Islamism, what do you encompass by it? Looked at in one way, could it be said that it divides into two wings that could roughly be compared to those in the socialist movement of the early twentieth century? That is, the ideology of the Brotherhood resembling a religious version of the attentiste, Kautskyan perspective: socialism is certain to come, and we have to organize diligently for it, but not actually make a revolution ourselves—history will do that for us. The outlook of breakaways from the Brotherhood consensus like Qutb or Zawahiri looking, on the other hand, more like the voluntarist tradition of Lenin or Luxemburg: history is moving in our direction, but that doesn’t absolve us from taking bold, imaginative action to bring our desired society about. The analogy is, of course, only a formal one. But would you say the two kinds of Muslim movement are so different that it’s altogether misleading?

Well, in writing of religious determinism, I was of course thinking of the socialist conception of history. Let me first say that there is a qualitative difference between what I call respectively Islamism and militant jihadism, and explain where it lies. The basic idea of Islamism is that Muslims have been led astray from what it means to be Muslim by Western modernity and everything that comes with it. God has removed his divine blessing from us, as a warning sign that there is something wrong. The solution is to return to Islam, which has become a stranger in the land; for this is a moment of rebirth, a time like that of the Prophet when he started to preach his message. So you may be secretive; you can’t say everything outright to everyone, because they’re not ready for the message. Therefore a stance of condescension is required, indeed a lot of deception, since you’re dealing with people who have been led astray, but are unaware of their plight. They need to be brought back to the faith gradually, but once they are there, there is no need for violence to discipline them. When you ask a Brother, are you going to force women to wear the veil, they all say no—when we bring people back to religion, they comply with these obligations of their own accord. Militant jihadists, on the other hand, not only hold to a more radical, literalist interpretation of Islam, but for them there is no sense of Islam being reborn. It is already there: the point is to observe it. If you are a Muslim, you have already undertaken to follow its injunctions, and if you do not, you should be punished. Women should be forced to wear the veil, alcohol must be outlawed, banks cannot practice usury. There can be no discussion of such questions. They are contractual obligations which if disobeyed must be enforced.

Now it’s true that, within the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb did argue for the need of a vanguard to carry out bold and spectacular action to shock people out of their lethargy and return them to religion, rather than a more long-term perspective of conversion. In my book I also show that there were moments when the founder of the Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna himself said: give me a well-equipped vanguard and I’ll lead you anywhere. Equally, Qutb could at times, even in his late writings in prison, say the task was essentially one of persuasion. What really came to divide Islamism from militant jihadism, however, was the influence of Saudi Wahabism. You can see its impact in the career of Ayman al-Zawahiri who joined the Brotherhood as a youth and knew Qutb personally, before going on to write a book completely debunking the Brothers, and joining bin Laden in Al Qaeda. If you want to see the tension between the two movements today, you have only to look at Gaza, where Hamas’s greatest problem is not Fatah, but the local jihadist formations, whose videos explain that the number one enemy of the faithful is Hamas, then Fatah, then Israel, then the us, in that order. Why? Because Hamas are pretending to be Muslims, and their example only leads to a perpetual postponement of the fight against the enemies of Islam. So the two are very different things. Of course, the word Islamism has escaped into the public realm, where its usages can’t be controlled. But, in my estimation, Islamism is one thing, and jihadi militancy another.

Jihadism does now have some roots in Egypt too, in organizing Bedouin resistance to the existing order in Sinai. How serious a problem is this for the Sisi regime?

Sinai is sparsely populated by Bedouin, who for two reasons have always lived in semi-autonomous conditions. One is the general weakness of the infrastructure of the state, whose reach doesn’t really extend much beyond the Nile Valley in any direction, east or west. So policing and regulation of the peninsula have always been quite lax. But also, of course, Israel occupied Sinai for the better part of two decades, and returned it to Egypt only on the condition that it was demilitarized, barring the Egyptian Army from any free movement across it, and so creating an ungoverned space for the Bedouin. Interactions between the state and the Bedouin have in any case always been rudimentary and harsh. There’s no right hand and left hand of the state in Sinai—not enough roads, schools or clinics, essentially just police, purportedly arresting drugs or arms dealers or whatever. So this has always been a very antagonistic relationship. The state was also extremely short-sighted in channelling what resources it was willing to put into the peninsula towards the empty southern part of Sinai, to create luxurious resorts for tourists, rather than into the heart of the peninsula where the Bedouin live, to help integrate them into modern Egypt. So there was a very serious, long-standing set of problems in Sinai well before the current insurgency. But since 2011 these have been greatly compounded by the switch to a full-scale military campaign, deploying helicopters, missiles, tanks, armoured vehicles, special forces and the like, which has caused even greater alienation of the local population. The upshot is an extremely explosive situation. With American military aid and Israeli border control, the insurgency may be crushed. But any improvement in ordinary conditions of life there, which would require constructive investment? That seems much less probable, considering the current economic situation.

Historically, students were often a force of rebellion in modern Egypt, as they were too in 2011. How do things stand with them today, as a potential source of opposition to the regime?

Firstly, the universities have become much more tightly controlled than before. In the early days of the revolution, the first, short-lived post-Mubarak government led by Essam Sharaf allowed for elections of faculty heads, college deans and university presidents. One of the first things Sisi did was to reverse this. Today that means the primary function of all presidents, deans and chairs is to keep students under control. Secondly, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was always the largest force in the student body, has been essentially snuffed out. Thirdly, the blanket repression outside the universities has chilled resistance within them. Before Sisi, there was a range of active organizations and intellectual figures in civil society that formed centres of reference for students, with quite a bit of coordination between them, which made students feel that student politics were part of national politics. Closing down all venues of public opposition—the nominal parties that are permitted have never been more irrelevant—has left students feeling they’re trapped in a bubble, cut off from the world, closely controlled, without allies inside or outside the campus. So student politics are much more impoverished than before.

The central argument of your latest book, The Power Triangle, is that modern authoritarian regimes typically rest on three distinct apparatuses of power, the armed forces, the security apparatus and the political system, and that there is always competition for precedence between these three. In your ensuing comparative survey of Turkey, Iran and Egypt, you locate each country at a different point of this ‘power triangle’: a predominance of the military, up to the arrival of the akp, in Turkey; of the court as the nerve-centre of the monarchical political system in Iran, up to the fall of the Shah, and of the security complex in Egypt, after the fall of the monarchy there. You end the book, however, with a remark that nuances this overall taxonomy, by remarking that Sisi’s regime could evolve in two different directions: either a presidential populism with military predominance, as under Nasser, or a continuation of what you categorize as the police dictatorships of Sadat and Mubarak. Does this leave an ambiguity in your final judgement? For a presidential populism with military predominance seems to be just what you’ve been describing as the character of the present regime, in which the Army has conspicuously increased its power relative to the security and administrative systems. Would this mean that in your view Egypt is moving, or has moved, out of the ranks of police dictatorships, into those of a praetorian cast?

The crucial point here is that this is still a system in a state of flux. I think there is no doubt that Egypt remains in the grip of a security-dominated regime, in the sense that domestic security is the driving logic of the state. Everything else is superseded by security. The new thing is that many citizens, for the first time since Nasser’s day, have come to accept that we are living in an age of regional disasters, state collapse and global conspiracies. So the idea of the overriding security logic has acquired some social legitimacy. The problem is how the different institutions are analytically lined up in enforcing it. There the first question becomes: who is responsible for domestic repression? Nasser discovered in 1967 that the coexistence of two separate, powerful apparatuses of repression is destabilizing. Today such a duality has returned, and I don’t think it can last long. Which of them is to prevail needs to be settled. But it cannot be settled as it was when Nasser came to power, because the security institution of the monarchy was still quite small, so the military could just take over its functions and reshape it to serve the new regime. Now the security complex is large, and used to overreaching. At the same time, the military is keenly aware of what happened to its position when it signed off its security role. So today, two security institutions are locking horns, with no clear way out of this.

Moreover, the political system required by the regime is quite unsettled. What is it going to look like? Different kinds of politics work better with different kinds of repression. A populist dictatorship along Nasser’s lines would be more conducive to military repression, whereas an oligarchic authoritarianism in which old-regime networks succeed in making Sisi the figurehead of a system in which they call the shots would tip the balance of repression towards the security complex, with which they developed a close relationship over decades. The final uncertain element lies in the armed forces themselves, which are being pulled in different directions. Are the military entirely happy at becoming so predominant? There are reasons to doubt it. The Army understands Sisi is trying to create a kind of populist dictatorship, and this will demand a lot from them. In particular, it will require them to deliver economically—not merely to benefit economically, but to deliver as well—with very limited resources, to an overwhelmingly poor population.

This could put a huge burden on them, and make them a target of popular anger if they fail or refuse to do so. Inevitably, they will be asking themselves: can we, or do we really want to do that? Or should we maintain our independence, and tell Sisi that he will have to sink or swim on his own? At the same time, they realize that, if he wants to create a populist dictatorship, he will depend on them for domestic repression, and though they don’t want to be marginalized again, as they were under Sadat and Mubarak, how much appetite do they really have for this? I don’t think the military are too excited about going in any one of these directions. So, for all these reasons, I would conclude by saying that Egypt is still manifestly and overwhelmingly a security state, but the institutional line-up of powers within the regime has yet to be settled. Most, if not all, of the possible scenarios are negative, but they are not the same. We need to be able to distinguish them. The Egyptian question cannot be reduced to whether the 2011 revolution has failed or not. We must understand how the regime has changed and is changing.</s>In recent weeks there has been severe tension between Egypt and Saudi Arabia due to disagreements on the Syrian crisis. These disagreements, which are long-standing, recently deepened and became public, especially after on October 8, 2016, Egypt voted at the UN Security Council in favor of a Russian draft resolution on the situation in Aleppo, a draft resolution that Saudi Arabia opposed.[1]

Egypt's support for the Russian draft resolution was a blatant expression of its dispute with Saudi Arabia over the Syrian crisis and constitutes an independent Egyptian step that placed this country squarely outside the Saudi camp. In fact, Egypt's position on resolving the Syrian crisis is clearly closer to that of Russia, the ally of Bashar Al-Assad, than to the Saudi position.

In the weeks prior to the vote at the UN, Egyptian senior officials, headed by President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, began voicing in public their position on the Syrian crisis and clarifying the points of contention with Saudi Arabia in this matter. Their statements, as well as articles published in the Egyptian press, described Saudi Arabia as advocating a military solution in Syria and supporting the armed factions there, in contrast to Egypt, which advocates a political solution, seeks to end the bloodshed in the country and preserve its unity and stability, and also seeks to halt the spread of terrorism from Syria to other countries. It was claimed further that, while Saudi Arabia insists on the ouster of Bashar Al-Assad as a condition for a solution in Syria, Egypt does not endorse this view. Some of the articles stressed Syria's importance to Egypt and the security and strategic ties between the two countries, stating that Egypt's position on Syria stemmed from Egyptian interests that take precedence over Arab ones.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, was enraged by Egypt's support of the Russian draft resolution. Saudi Representative to the UN 'Abdallah Yahya Al-Mouallimi wondered how it could be that some non-Arab countries were closer to the Arab positions than Egypt was. Furthermore, Saudi Ambassador to Egypt Ahmed Al-Kattan was recalled to Riyadh for consultations. In addition, Saudi Arabia has begun taking economic steps, apparently in response to Egypt's significant divergence from the Saudi position. For example, two days after the vote at the UN Security Council, it was reported that the largest Saudi oil company, Saudi Aramco, had suspended the supply of oil to Egypt, and that Saudia Airlines, the Saudi national carrier, had not approved EgyptAir flights to Saudi Arabia. These moves were seen in Egypt as Saudi economic sanctions against Egypt.

The Saudi anger at Egypt was also expressed in numerous Saudi press articles that described the Al-Sisi's regime as ungrateful, given the significant material and political support Saudi Arabia has extended to Al-Sisi. At the same time, other articles called to understand Egypt's considerations, especially in light of its complicated political situation.

It should be noted that Egyptian-Saudi relations since Al-Sisi's rise to power have seen ups and downs. Both countries have been trying to keep up a front of unity and close relations. Saudi Arabia supported Al-Sisi and his ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) regime headed by Muhammad Mursi; the Saudi support for the current Egyptian regime was also manifested in significant economic aid extended to Egypt. Egyptian president Al-Sisi, for his part, declared on several occasions that the Egyptian army is on full alert, ready to defend Egypt's sister-countries in the Gulf, should they be directly threatened. In April 2016 Saudi King Salman made a historic visit to Egypt, during which the latter acknowledged Saudi Arabia's sovereignty over the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which had been under Egyptian sovereignty for years, and agreed to transfer them back to the kingdom. A series of economic agreements were also made during the visit.[2] However, despite their efforts to appear united, significant disagreements have surfaced between the two countries on various issues - chiefly Saudi Arabia's openness towards Turkey and the MB, which Egypt regards as its enemies, and, conversely, indications of possible rapprochement between Egypt and Iran, as well as Egypt's position on Syria. Saudi Arabia is also severely disappointed with the limited extent of Egypt's cooperation with it in the war against the Houthis in Yemen, and with Egypt's failure so far to implement the agreement on the transfer of the two islands.

The Saudi ire was also sparked by the participation of a senior Egyptian delegation, headed by Egyptian Mufti Shawki 'Allam, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayeb, and Al-Sisi's advisor Osama Al-Azhari, in a conference of Muslim clerics in Grozny in late August 2016, under the title "Who Are The Sunnis?" Saudi clerics were not invited to this conference, and its closing statement, which defined the term "Sunni," made no mention of Wahhabiyya and Salafiyya. Saudi Arabia saw this conference as a plot against its status as the leader of the Sunni world and leveled harsh criticism at Egypt for participating in it.[3]

This report reviews the current tension between the two countries over the solution of the Syrian crisis.

As noted above, in recent weeks Egyptian officials, chiefly President Al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Shukri, publicly discussed the Egypt-Saudi rift over a resolution to the Syria crisis.

On August 22, 2016, President Al-Sisi gave an interview to the editors of Egypt's three main newspapers, Al-Ahram, Al-Gumhouriyya, and Al-Akhbar, in which he stressed that "Egypt's position regarding the Syria crisis is based on a number of principles: honoring the contiguousness of Syrian lands and the will of the Syrian people; reaching a political solution; disarming the militias and extremist groups; and restoring and reopening Syrian state institutions."[4]

In his September 2016 speech to the UN General Assembly, Al-Sisi stressed that the solution for Syria was political, not military. He called for disarming the militias and extremist groups, but did not address what was to happen to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. He also refrained from blaming the Assad regime and Russia for the ongoing crisis. He said: "The ongoing bloodshed in Syria and the lack of a political horizon are no longer acceptable. It is clear what needs to be done - an immediate and total halt of all aggression across Syria, which will pave the way for a political solution that ends the bloodshed and prevents the ongoing chaos, the only result of which is the spread of terrorism. We welcome the cessation of hostilities agreement achieved through [much] effort by Russia and the U.S., and anticipate an acceleration of serious international moves to renew negotiations as soon as possible, in order to arrive at a comprehensive solution for the crisis."[5]

In contrast, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Naif bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Sa'ud called, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, to facilitate a transitional process in Syria by supporting the moderate opposition, and accused President Assad of being responsible for the massacre of and crimes against the Syrian people.[6]

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri expressed himself more forthrightly and decisively regarding the points of contention with Saudi Arabia. Two days after Al-Sisi's speech to the UN General Assembly, Shukri told the editors of Egypt's three main newspapers, in an interview, that Saudi Arabia is promoting an unviable solution to the Syria crisis, and described Egypt's role as "the voice of reason." While Shukri did emphasize the extensive Egypt-Syria relationship and coordination, he added: "The disagreement surrounds the question of whether or not armed struggle can decide the situation in Syria. Our position since the start has been that armed struggle will decide nothing, and that there is no place for terrorist organizations in the new Syria. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia believes that armed struggle will [indeed] decide the situation in Syria, and will lead to change. But this will not happen."

Additionally, Shukri argued that "there is no need for a ceasefire to launch a political process, because the tragic situation in Syria, and its ramifications, are compelling us to formulate guidelines for political negotiations, so that we can work in accordance with them as opposed to waiting for a ceasefire..."[7] This position vis-à-vis a ceasefire contrasts with that of the Syrian armed resistance, which is supported by Saudi Arabia, according to which negotiations are conditional upon a ceasefire. It also contrasts with Al-Sisi's statements at the UN General Assembly.

In its reporting, the Egyptian independent Islamic daily Al-Misriyyoun, which was not represented at the interview, highlighted additional points of Egyptian-Saudi contention that it claimed were raised during the interview. The newspaper reported that Shukri said, when asked whether a departure by President Assad could bring Syria to the same situation as Iraq's and Libya's following the ouster of their leaders: "That is the affair of the Syrian people, and we should not discuss specific individuals or waste time on questions regarding the post-war phase." He stressed that, unlike Saudi Arabia, whose "position highlights the need for regime or leadership change in Syria, Egypt does not support this..."[8] It should be noted that while none of the three newspapers whose editors interviewed Shukri reported on these statements, they were widely cited in the Arab media and were not denied by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

Articles In Official Egyptian Press: The Choice Is Between Bashar Al-Assad And Jabhat Al-Nusra

Following Shukri's and Al-Sisi's statements, the official Egyptian press further examined, in a number of articles, the Egypt-Saudi schism, specifically regarding the fate of Bashar Al-Assad and the two countries' divergent priorities for dealing with the crisis. The Egyptian positions reflected in these articles are in line with those of Russia and the Syrian regime.

'Abd Al-Hadi 'Allam, the editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, characterized Egypt's position as follows: "Assad has no place in Egypt's future, but now is not the time [to remove him]. In other words, Assad is not part of the future but he is part of the [immediate] solution." He added: "Egypt presented the elements [who support the Syrian opposition] with a question: 'Who will fill the vacuum after Bashar [Al-Assad] is gone?' The answer was: 'Terrorism and the extremists, of course. That's a certainty'... If Bashar [Al-Assad] is removed from the scene right now, what will happen next? Syria will surely suffer the same fate as Iraq and Libya! Are the region and the world prepared [to face] another Somalia? Everyone will pay the price. This terror will spread to Europe, the U.S. and the [entire] region..."[9]

Makram Muhammad Ahmad, the former head of Egypt's journalists' union, likewise warned in an Al-Ahram article that the alternative to Assad could be the extremist terrorists. He wrote that Egypt's stance is "based on a correct Arab position that is attempting to restore a minimal [degree of] Arab solidarity, and which demands to put an immediate stop to the civil war in Syria and save the Syrian people and state from certain catastrophe that will weigh on the Arab consciousness for decades. The loss of Syria will mean the loss of the entire Middle East, because the victory of extremist organizations in Syria will accelerate the collapse of the entire Arab nation, and [in this context] there is no difference between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan - all of them are targets for attack!"

Ahmad urged Saudi Arabia to endorse the Egyptian position and allow the Syrian people to decide Assad's fate, and even proposed an Arab-Iranian reconciliation to avoid sectarian war: "The only way to avoid [this scenario of an accelerated collapse] is for Egypt and Saudi Arabia to formulate a joint position vis-à-vis the Syria crisis, so as to unite the Arab efforts to save the Syrian people and state. This position must oppose supporting extremist organization and arming them, especially Jabhat Al-Nusra. [It must also] demand that the [international] powers keep their hands off the Syrian people, support its independent [decisions], and leave the question of Bashar Al-Assad's fate for [the Syrian] people to decide via parliamentary and presidential elections that will end the reign of the Assad family after 42 years of division, rift and hopeless wars. No matter how intense the conflict with Bashar Al-Assad and his family, Jabhat Al-Nusra is [surely] not fit to replace them, because allowing it to head the regime or be a part of it will mean perpetuating the Syrian civil war. We can [even] open a new path towards Arab-Iranian reconciliation, in order to save the Muslims, both Shi'ite and Sunni, from an all-out sectarian war and reduce the danger of foreign intervention seeking to widen this rift and turn it into a big civil war that will destroy the Arab and Muslim world."[10]

In his column in Al-Masri Al-Yawm, 'Abd Al-Nasser Salama, the former editor of the daily of Al-Ahram, stressed the points of contention between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and stated that Al-Sisi's statements at the UN "reflected a clear Egyptian position that has never been expressed so firmly... The value of this position," he added, "cannot be understated... for it is different from the position of many others in the region... chiefly from the position of Saudi Arabia, which has always advocated a military solution and constantly threatened Assad via official statements... [to the effect] that he must step down voluntarily or else be removed by force. This position has not changed one whit so far. It seems that Egypt is moving towards adopting an independent position on the regional level... Some might think that we are headed towards an open crisis with Riyadh, and that the signs of its impending outbreak are clear, for Egypt and Saudi Arabia are divided on many issues, certainly about what is happening in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and even in Gaza. They also differ in the nature of their relations with Qatar, Turkey and Russia."[11]

Saudis Enraged By Egypt's Vote In Favor Of Russian Resolution In UN Security Council

These statements were a prelude to Egypt's adopting an independent policy on the Syria crisis, opposed to the Saudi position. This policy was manifested in Egypt's voting in favor of an October 8, 2016 Russian draft proposal in the UN Security Council concerning the situation in Aleppo, a move that enraged the Saudis.

In effect, Egypt supported two UN draft proposals on a ceasefire in Aleppo that contradicted one another. One, submitted by France, also on October 8, called for a no-fly zone over the city, and the other, submitted by Russia after it vetoed the French proposal, stated that one of the main conditions for a ceasefire was for the Syrian opposition factions to distance themselves from Jabhat Fath Al-Sham, formerly called Jabhat Al-Nusra.

Egypt's representative to the UN, 'Amr Abu Al-Atta, explained why his country had supported the two conflicting draft proposals, noting that Egypt "is supporting all efforts to end the suffering of the Syrian people. It voted based on the content of the proposals, not as part of political sloganeering that thwarts the activity of the Security Council." According to him, Egypt supported points that were included in both drafts, among them halting the targeting of Syrian civilians, delivering humanitarian aid, halting aggressive actions in accordance with Security Council resolutions, and decisively addressing "some armed groups' flagrant disregard of calls by the international community not to collaborate with terrorist organizations." He said that both drafts prioritized the cessation of aggression in Aleppo and called for renewing the political process and negotiations on the transitional phase in Syria.[12]

As stated, Egypt's vote in favor of the Russian draft proposal infuriated the Saudis. Permanent Saudi Representative to the UN 'Abdallah Yahya Al-Mouallimi called the Egyptian vote "unfortunate" and said: "Egypt's vote in the Security Council and its support for the Russian draft resolution express [only] the Egyptian position. Arab coordination is carried out via the Arab League's Council of [Foreign] Ministers... It was absurd [of Russia] to submit this counter-proposal [to the French draft] that received only four votes. I feel sorry for the elements that voted for the [Russian draft] resolution, since it was strongly and harshly opposed."[13] He added: "It was unfortunate to see that Senegal and Malaysia's position was closer to the agreed-upon Arab stance than the position of the [Egyptian] Arab representative."[14]

Khaled Al-Tuwaijri, former chief of the Saudi Royal Court, addressed Al-Sisi on Twitter under the hashtag "Egypt voted in favor of the Russian proposal." He wrote: "Mr. President, I am very sorry for this position of yours regarding Saudi Arabia. You have forgotten our positions that support you like brothers!!"[15]

The Saudis' rage also took the form of practical steps: Saudi Ambassador to Egypt Ahmed Al-Kattan was recalled to Riyadh for deliberations on bilateral ties between the countries.[16]

Additionally, several Saudi companies took steps that could negatively impact Egypt's economy. For example, several days after the Security Council vote, Egyptian sources reported that the largest Saudi oil company, Saudi Aramco, had informed Egypt that during October it would not supply the monthly quantity of oil that had been agreed upon during King Salman's April 2016 visit to Egypt. However, it should be mentioned that Saudi Aramco had actually delivered this message in early October, prior to the Security Council vote, and the spokesman of Egypt's Oil Ministry said that the move was economic, not political.[17] Also, the director of the Egyptian Civil Aviation Agency said that Saudia Airlines, the Saudi national carrier, had not approved EgyptAir flights to Saudi Arabia. This, he said, was also unrelated to developments in Egypt-Saudi relations, and happened prior to the Security Council vote.[18]

Despite the claims that these two moves had nothing to do with Egypt-Saudi relations, they were viewed in Egypt as the Saudis' signal of their intention to economically penalize Egypt.

Saudi Journalists: Egypt Is No Longer Fit To Lead The Arab World - And Could Forfeit Its Alliance With The Gulf States

Sa'ud Al-Rayes, a columnist for the Al-Hayat daily, wrote that Egypt's position under Al-Sisi is vague, and that Egypt deludes itself that it is the leader of the Arab world when in fact it is unable to fulfill this role. He wondered: "What does Egypt want with respect to Syria? Does it want to support the regime? If so, why does it not declare this [explicitly] or at least hold a dialogue with the regime about stopping the massacre of the Syrian people? If Egypt's president does not want to support the [Syrian] regime and is concerned for the safety of the Syrian people - as we hope he is - why doesn't the Egyptian regime support the Syrian people instead of adopting vague positions in its decisions regarding it? Perhaps the Egyptian president does not support either the Syrian regime or the Syrian people, but rather the contiguousness of Syrian [land], and that is also fine. But if the world, with its two poles - American and Russian - wants to see Syria divided, what can the Egyptian president do [about it]? The problem is that Egypt does not tell us what it wants, nor do its positions indicate the answer [to this question]. This begs [another] question: does Egypt even know what it wants regarding Syria?"

Al-Rayes went on to accuse Egypt of being ungrateful: "The Gulf countries worked to protect Egypt and its people, and supported its president both before and after he rose to power, on the material and political levels. They pressured the world, especially the U.S. and Europe, to hold ties with him. Despite this, the Gulf countries do not feel that this investment had a positive effect on the Arab and Muslim world... [for] the other side [Egypt] did not do what was needed in order to support the Arab and Muslim world... Egypt's problem today is that it still labors under the illusion that it is the leader of the Arab world and that nobody else is fit to lead it. [But] the big problem is that Egypt is no longer fit to lead, either politically or economically... It has no presence [in addressing] Arab issues. Even in the neighboring countries [its influence] is completely absent, so what [can be said] about distant countries?..."[19]

Saudi Journalist Muhammad Al-'Osaimi warned in an article in 'Okaz that the Gulf states may drop Egypt as an ally. These states, he said, rely on Egypt's help in confronting the Iranian threat. "But if Egypt chooses to take a different path and to [strike] alliances that are at odds with the Gulf position on Syria and with the Iranian threats, then it [effectively] chooses to give up its allies, [namely] Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Nobody can force Egypt to maintain [the alliance] with them, but at the same time, nobody can blame Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states if they drop Egypt and work to form other alliances to protect their security and that of their peoples.

"However, no matter how saddening [the recent developments] are, there is hope that Egypt still understands how its national security, and the national security of all Arabs, might be adversely affected if it dismantles its alliance with the Gulf states in favor of other alliances..."[20]

Fury In Egypt Over Saudi Criticism, Economic Measures - President Al-Sisi: Egypt Will Bow Down Only Before Allah, Will Not Abandon Syria, Which Is Crucial For Its National Security

Egypt, for its part, was enraged by the Saudi criticism over its vote in the UN Security Council, and also over the economic measures taken by Saudi companies which were perceived as a threat of economic sanctions. President Al-Sisi stressed that his country would not submit to anyone and would adhere to its independent policy. At the same time, he wished to downplay the significance of reports on Egyptian-Saudi tensions and about Aramco's decision to suspend the supply of oil to Egypt, stating that nothing could harm the relations between his country and the "sister" Gulf states.

In a conference held by the Egyptian army on the anniversary of the October War (the 1973 war with Israel), Al-Sisi said: "In the recent weeks, there have been unwelcome debates [expressing] hostility towards Egypt in the Gulf media. I wish to remind you... that I said nobody can come between us and our brothers in the Arab Gulf states. However, we pursue an independent policy in protecting Arab national security... The Egyptian vote in favor of the [French and Russian] draft resolutions was one [vote], and there was no contradiction, because it was [a vote] in favor of ceasefire and delivering humanitarian aid. Some observers claimed that [Aramco's] suspension of the oil supply to Egypt had been a response to the vote, but this is an economic agreement [with no political dimensions]... Immediately [following the reports about the vote] we took the required measures. We have no problem with oil... If Egypt wants to make independent decisions, the Egyptian people has to bear the consequences... Our relations with the peoples of the Gulf are solid and well-established. What is happening now is an attempt to destroy these relations, similar to [attempts being] made inside Egypt by spreading rumors meant to isolate it. Egypt will bow down only before Allah. We have no problem meeting the challenges, as long as we are united... We are intensely committed to our relations with the Gulf states and to the [Arab] national security, which is indivisible, [but only] within the confines of the independence of Egypt's courts. Egypt will not harm anyone, even one who harmed it."[21]

A few days later, in another interview with Egypt's three main newspapers, Al-Ahram, Al-Gumhouriyya, and Al-Akhbar, President Al-Sisi called to increase the cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Egypt in order to clarify the policy, but denied the reports about significant tension between the two countries, saying that it was a fiction spread by the media and social networks. He said: "There is need for closer coordination with our brothers in Saudi Arabia, in order to clarify things. As for the [issue of] the oil supply, after the decision was made [to suspend it], we approved the agreements necessary to meet our needs. We do not want things to get out of proportion, because nothing affects the strategic ties of brotherhood between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and nothing must be allowed to harm this historic connection or to create a rift [between us]. We express to our Saudi brothers our full thanks and appreciation for the help they extended to Egypt during the [difficult] times it experienced... It is the handling of [this affair] in the media and the talk on social media that created the impression [of a rift between the countries], but there is no cloud over Egyptian-Saudi relations."[22]

Responding to the criticism voiced by Saudi Arabia's representative to the UN 'Abdallah Yahya Al-Mouallimi, Egyptian MP 'Imad Gad, the deputy director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said that "Riyadh created a problem and started openly criticizing Egypt." He added that this could deepen the disagreements between the two countries "on handling crises in the Middle East, especially since Saudi Arabia is cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, Iraq and other countries in order to realize its interests and impose its perception of the solution [to the crises]."[23]

Al-Masri Al-Yawm editor Muhammad Amin took a more moderate tone, stressing the depth and importance of Egypt's relations with Saudi Arabia, but also the depth of its commitment to Syria, and urged the Saudis to understand that "[Egypt's] vote at the Security Council was not [a vote] against Saudi Arabia but [rather a vote] for Syria." He wrote: "We are at a historical moment, and it is inconceivable that we should be on one side and Saudi Arabia on another, nor is it conceivable that we should leave Saudi Arabia alone in the fray. But this does not prevent us from having our own positions on Syria. I am sure that Egypt's position on Syria comes as no surprise to Saudi Arabia. Our position is constant, declared and known, even if Saudi Arabia does not like it. Syria is [like a] norther province of Egypt, and [it is crucial for Egypt's] national security. We cannot sacrifice it - either for Saudi Arabia's sake or anyone else's... Let's be logical. Did Egypt [ever] promise to adopt Saudi Arabia's position on Syria and Lebanon? [Our relations] do not depend on sharing [all our] positions and interests."

Seeking to reassure Saudi Arabia, Amin added: "Egypt will by no means manipulate its sister [country]. If that happened, it is wrong - [especially] at a time when Saudi Arabia is facing a threat of partition on the one hand and JASTA on the other. Egypt does not do [things like that]. [Both] its morals, its status and its interests forbid it. That is why no [Saudi] is entitled to condemn [Egypt] or threaten us with painful measures... Egypt has no interest in losing [the friendship of] Saudi Arabia, even for a moment. But neither is it an Egyptian interest to see Syria partitioned..." Amin stated that "no disagreement, hidden or overt, exists between us and Saudi Arabia," but stressed that "Saudi Arabia's concern is Bashar [Al-Assad], whereas Egypt's concern is the Syrian state. When Egypt cast its vote, it was thinking of the [Syrian] state, and when Saudi Arabia cast its vote it was thinking of Bashar [Al-Assad]. I hope Saudi Arabia forgets Bashar [Al-Assad] and concentrates on its own affairs. That would be better for us and for them."[24]

Reports that the Saudi oil company Aramco had decided to suspend the supply of oil to Egypt for a month likewise sparked harsh criticism in the Egyptian press, which declared that Egypt would not capitulate to economic pressures and that it had alternative sources of aid. Al-Ahram editor Muhammad 'Abd Al-Hadi 'Allam wrote: "Those who do not read Egypt's history do not realize how much patience and fortitude its people are blessed with. Thanks to [this patience and fortitude] Egypt will never alter its firm principles on issues concerning the countries of the Middle East. Egypt cannot be pressured, and the delusions of those who think they can trigger, or help trigger, internal problems [in Egypt] are incompatible with Egypt's status.

"I think that all the foreign aid that Egypt receives, in all its forms, must be reexamined, in order to determine what can be replaced in the short term and what can be negotiated in light of common interests with certain countries. The language of subjugation and [exploiting] interests will not avail [anyone] when it comes to Egypt, whose honor and whose people's honor must not be demeaned. We must face the situation squarely and declare that we are rethinking everything that burdens [our] decision-makers...

"[Protecting] Egypt's interests does not mean harming the interests of others, [but] Egypt's interests take precedence over Arab ones..."[25]

The owner of the Al-Yawm Al-Masri daily, Salah Diab, who writes under the pen-name Newton, wrote in a similar vein. While assuring Saudi Arabia that Egypt harbors it no ill will, he stressed the depth of Egypt's relations with Syria, calling the two countries "twins," and stated that no economic pressures or economic siege would cause Egypt to change its position: "This is not the first time we have been under siege or had friends boycott us or enemies rejoice at our misfortune. We have experienced much hardship and distress in the course of our history... but we [always] knew how to withstand the hardship with fortitude... We do not fear trials and hardship. We are not alarmed by siege. We have unusual powers of adaptation." Mentioning the disagreements between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over Yemen in the 1960s, Newton added: "I hope that our Saudi brothers in the past and the future... [understood then] and understand [now] that Egypt has no evil intentions towards any Arab state. Just as our position on the Yemen revolution [in the 1960s] was not directed against our Saudi brothers, Egypt's current position on Syria is not directed at Saudi Arabia. Egypt is [merely] fulfilling its obligation. It has always been close to Syria - geographically, historically and culturally. Egypt and Syria are twins. They have always had an existential, security and strategic connection... This eternal Egyptian position does not in any way entail hostility towards Saudi Arabia and is not directed against Saudi Arabia... Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the central pillars of the Arab tent. Without them the Arabs will continue to deteriorate..." He concluded: "No matter how dire Egypt's economic situation, it can withstand any boycott. But the Arab world cannot withstand a misunderstanding between the two great sisters, Egypt and Saudi Arabia."[26]

Egyptian television presenter Lamis El-Hadidy said in her program on the CBC channel: "Egypt's hand cannot be forced by means of the oil aid. We will not accept that. Egyptians must put their [powers of endurance] to the test. If [the Saudis] pressure us, we will be forced by buy Israeli gas, which is closer and cheaper." Senior Egyptian journalist and television presenter Wael Al-Abrashi called on Saudi Arabia to apologize, warning that if it doesn't, Egypt may withhold military aid from Saudi Arabia, should the latter require it. [27]

On the other hand, figures in both countries tried to downplay the recent developments and alleviate the tensions between them, although this was more the case in Saudi Arabia than in Egypt. Saudi Arabia's Al-Arabiya TV reported that a delegation of Egyptian officials was expected in Saudi Arabia in the next few days to discuss the recent events.[28]

Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said: "There is no Egypt-Saudi schism. Reports that the Saudi representative [to the UN] attacked Egypt are neither correct nor accurate, and are in contrast to the truth... Egypt has not deviated from the Arab position vis-à-vis the Syrian crisis, and supports an end to the bloodshed and a ceasefire."[29]

Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri stressed that Egypt's relationship with Saudi Arabia is "strong" and that no one could separate the two. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, he said, that is attempting to drive a wedge between the countries and spread misinformation that the Saudis aim to stop the transfer of oil to Egypt. Bakri called on Egyptian journalists to "stop attacking Saudi Arabia, because it has always stood alongside us, and it stands with us now as well."[30]

In Saudi Arabia too there were those who tried to put out the fire. 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the London based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and former general manager of Al-Arabiya TV, tweeted in response to Saudi anti-Egypt commentary: "Egypt's position is not strange. We must treat Egypt like Turkey. [We must understand it just as] we understand why Turkey conducts massive deals with Iran while at the same time maintaining a political position that is opposed to it." Al-Rashed also accused the Muslim Brotherhood of attempting to incite Saudi Arabia to fight the Egyptian government in its stead, and assured his readers: "This will not happen. Egypt is [Saudi Arabia's] most important ally, regardless of who heads [Egypt]."[31]

Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa, a columnist for the official Saudi daily Al-Watan, criticized the Saudi "intelligentsia and public opinion leaders" for being "dragged along" with the reaction of the Saudi street, and for directing condemnation at Egypt just because it voted in favor of the Russian draft resolution "that would have certainly been vetoed anyway." He wrote: "First of all, expecting the other, whoever it is, to adopt your position and examine events solely from your perspective is a cultural flaw in the political perception. Egypt has complex political interests. It is currently rebuilding itself after being abandoned by weak and hesitant American positions... We [Saudis] are currently dealing with the same U.S., and undergoing the same test of abandonment [i.e. the passage of JASTA]. Second, in politics you must give the friendly brother whom you trust a chance to follow a parallel or even an opposite path, because the day may come when... you need him to convey your political messages, or as a mediator. Third, and this could be the main point: Let us clearly and objectively examine the political positions on the issues that are shared by both sister countries, in an intellectual and not an emotional way: Why, for instance, did the Egyptian intelligentsia and official Egypt not rebuke us... when we had official relations with Iran, at a time when Egypt was the only Arab state that opposed [Iran]?... Why did Egypt never ask why we have an ambassador in Tehran when [Iran] named one of its main thoroughfares after the assassin of historic [Egyptian] leader Anwar Sadat...? Why did official Egypt never say a word or express suspicions or fears regarding our open alliance with Turkey, despite [Turkey's] flagrant interference in Egypt's internal affairs...? The only answer is that the politically astute in both countries' leaderships know that historic relations are far more important than a vote on a [single] resolution or the opening of an embassy..."

Al-Moussa added that in light of the danger of the spread of Iranian influence, and in light of the situation in the Arab world, there was a need to examine "what is left of the Arab and Islamic world, and what will remain if we drive a hot spike into the heart of Saudi-Egypt relations just because of a valueless vote in the Security Council?"[32]

Likewise, Muhammad Al-Sa'd, a columnist for the Saudi daily 'Okaz, wondered whether disagreement over a political issue was reason enough to sever relations between two sister countries: "Undoubtedly, Egypt has its own strategic interests and so does Saudi Arabia... In the difficult days that the Arab world is facing in the wake of 'the autumn of protests' [i.e., the Arab Spring] the two major capitals, Riyadh and Cairo, which are the final remaining cornerstone [of the Arab world], must not succumb to political disagreements, because Saudi Arabia's security and political depth is in Cairo, and Egypt's Arab and security depth is in Riyadh."[33]</s>U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a USA Thank You Tour event in Hershey, Pennsylvania, U.S., December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump discussed laying the groundwork for peace in the Middle East in a phone call on Thursday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a Trump transition official said.

The official did not know whether Trump and Sisi talked specifically about Egypt’s decision to postpone a vote set for Thursday in the U.N. Security Council on a resolution demanding that Israel end settlement building.</s>Donald Trump has named as his ambassador to Israel a pro-settler lawyer who has described some US Jews as worse than concentration camp prisoner-guards.

David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who represented the president-elect over his failing hotels in Atlantic City, served Trump’s advisory team on the Middle East. He has set out a number of hardline positions on Israeli-Palestinian relations, including fervent opposition to the two-state solution and strong support for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

He has called President Barack Obama an antisemite and suggested that US Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank are worse than kapos, Nazi-era prisoners who served as concentration camp guards.

Liberal Jewish groups in the US denounced the appointment as “reckless” and described Friedman – a man with no experience of foreign service – as the “least experienced pick” ever for a US ambassador to Israel.

Yossi Dagan, a prominent Israeli settler leader and friend of Friedman, welcomed the news, describing him as “a true friend and partner of the state of Israel and the settlements”. Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, said Friedman had “the potential to be the greatest US ambassador to Israel ever”.

An indication of how Friedman views Israel came in a 16-point action plan he issued with another Trump adviser in November. It included “ensur[ing] that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and tactical cooperation from the United States” and a declaration of war on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and pro-Palestinian campus activism.



Friedman, 57, has worked with Trump for more than 15 years and advised the president-elect on the Middle East during his election campaign. He represented Trump after the umbrella company for his three Atlantic City casinos, Trump Entertainment Resorts, went into bankruptcy in 2009.

He said he was looking forward to taking up his post in “the US embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem”, indicating Trump’s determination to overturn years of US policy and move the embassy from Tel Aviv. The change would be a potentially explosive gesture in the Middle East, as the status of Jerusalem is one of the issues in the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.



Also controversial is Friedman’s presidency of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions, an organisation that supports a large illegal West Bank settlement just outside Ramallah.

His links with Bet El, along with recent revelations that the family charity of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, gave money to one of the West Bank’s most hard-line ideological settlements, suggests the settler movement will have an unprecedented number of advocates in the heart of Washington.

Announcing the appointment in a statement, Trump said: “[Friedman] has been a long-time friend and trusted adviser to me. His strong relationships in Israel will form the foundation of his diplomatic mission and be a tremendous asset to our country as we strengthen the ties with our allies and strive for peace in the Middle East.”

The announcement appears to have caught Israeli analysts by surprise. The Haaretz columnist Chemi Shalev said Friedman made Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “seem like a leftwing defeatist”.

“From where Friedman stands,” he said, “most Israelis, never mind most American Jews, are more or less traitors.”

Friedman disagrees with the general international consensus that the settlements are illegal and he opposes a ban on settlement construction on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

He wrote in the Jerusalem Post during the US election campaign that Israel would feel “no pressure” under a Trump administration. “America and Israel will enjoy unprecedented military and strategic cooperation, and there will be no daylight between the two countries,” he said.

In a column for the Israel National News website, he compared the liberal Jewish US lobby group J Street to concentration camp prisoner-guards and described its supporters as “smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse”.



He went further at the Saban forum earlier this month, saying J Street’s supporters were “not Jewish, and they’re not pro-Israel”.

The J Street president, Jeremy Ben Ami, said in a statement on Thursday: “J Street is vehemently opposed to the nomination of David Friedman. This nomination is reckless, putting America’s reputation in the region and credibility around the world at risk.”

The National Jewish Democratic Council tweeted: “Trump must stand for a strong US-Israel relationship and take it seriously. [There] hasn’t ever been a less experienced pick for US ambassador to Israel.”

Lara Friedman, of Americans for Peace Now, tweeted: “I don’t know about the Palestinians, but I know Jews who truly care about Israel’s security, democracy & place in the world are outraged.”

Like Trump, Friedman is an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and has portrayed the Russian president as fighting Islamic State in Syria despite little of the Russian war effort being focused on Isis.

“Vladimir Putin gets it,” Friedman wrote in November last year. “He may be a ‘thug,’ as he was recently described by Senator [Marco] Rubio, but he knows how to identify a national objective, execute a military plan, and ultimately prevail.”</s>Egypt said US president-elect Donald Trump and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed to allow Trump's incoming administration a chance to tackle the Israeli settlement issue. By SAUL LOEB (AFP/File)

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt agreed to postpone a UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements when US president-elect Donald Trump called President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the presidency said Friday.

Egypt had requested on Thursday that the resolution demanding Israel halt settlements be postponed after Israel launched a frantic lobbying effort.

The presidency said the two leaders had agreed to allow Trump's incoming administration a chance to tackle the issue.</s>To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

There is no controversy like the controversy that surrounds the city of Jerusalem, the most divided city on the earth and the most coveted city on the earth.

The Bible predicted this more than 2,500 years ago, describing the day when Jerusalem would be a "a cup that brings dizziness to all the surrounding nations" (Zech. 12:2, NET), even declaring that one day, the whole would be in uproar over Jerusalem.

Stop and think about it for a moment.

Why does the whole world get so exercised over Jerusalem? Is there any other city on the planet that evokes such intense emotions and polar views?

And why does every nation put its embassies in the city that the host country identifies as its capital, except for the city of Jerusalem, identified as Israel's capital in 1950? Why do virtually all embassies remain in Tel Aviv?

There is something of spiritual significance to this ancient city that simply cannot be denied.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, "passed by overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate," states that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999."

Then why didn't presidents Bush or Obama move the embassy? As explained by Rabbi Shraga Simmons, "since the congressional act allows the President to implement a waiver at six-month intervals, that's exactly what has happened every six months since 1995."

Now that Donald Trump has insisted that he will, in fact, relocate our embassy — in accordance with the 1995 act — the controversy is hitting the fan. In the words of Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, imam of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, moving the embassy would be as good as a "declaration of war."

Consider the opposition to Trump's appointee for Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a strong supporter of Israel who speaks of our embassy's imminent relocation. As he said openly and proudly after his nomination, "I intend to work tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region, and look forward to doing this from the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem."

According to a December 16 email from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, known as "America's rabbi," Friedman is a "brilliant choice for Ambassador to Israel. One of America's most respected and accomplished attorneys, David is regarded in the highest esteem by the New York Jewish community as an exemplar of the American and Jewish virtues of education, erudition, philanthropy, and communal commitment."

He continued, "David has vast exposure to, and knowledge of, the Jewish State and its history and enjoys the confidence and respect of Israel's leaders. A man of humility and openness, he has a gift for listening, showing respect and deference to all whom he meets."

In sharp contrast, as noted on the Elder of Ziyon website, last Friday's New York Times "had four articles against Donald Trump's choice to be the US ambassador to Israel.

"Yes — four articles in one day. Two 'news' articles, one editorial, and one op-ed."

As Noah Pollack reported on The Washington Free Beacon, "The NYT Is Having a Meltdown Over Trump's Israel Nominee."

Pollack writes, "David Friedman is a prominent and successful attorney in New York who has spent 20 years representing Donald Trump, among other clients. He is also a proud Jew who holds unapologetic pro-Israel views that are heretical in Times-world, and he has also expressed acid disdain for the kind of Jewish anti-Israel activism regularly glorified in the pages of the Times.

"So he must be destroyed — and to destroy him he must be lied about. Which is what the Times did."

Pollack does not specifically mention Friedman's strong support for relocating our embassy, since there are other, controversial pro-Israel positions that Friedman supports, including the building of settlements in territories under Palestinian control and skepticism about a two-state solution. But you can be assured that a big part of the ruckus over Friedman's appointment is his affirmation that the American embassy will be moved.

That's why a headline on the Independent discussing Friedman's nomination focused on this issue alone, noting that, "Moving US embassy to Jerusalem would be 'declaration of war'."

And that's why New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stated to Chris Cuomo on CNN that "moving the American embassy — and this is an evergreen, everyone running for President tosses this out, no one actually does it — moving the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, in the absence of an agreed upon solution between Israelis and Palestinians, I would call that the 'Full Employment for Iran Act.'"

Yes, according to Friedman, it would also alienate the Sunni Arab regimes, meaning that this move would provoke the Shiite Muslims in Iran and the Sunni Muslims in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Jerusalem, the city of controversy indeed!

Thomas Friedman then reiterated to Cuomo and co-host Alisyn Camerota: "This is such madness that it's — it's just — I can't believe we're talking about it."

Yet Kellyanne Conway, Trump's senior adviser, has reiterated that the incoming president really does plan to make this move, calling it a "big priority" for him. And how revealing that Thomas Friedman noted that "everyone running for President tosses this out" but "no one actually does it," whereas Trump is threatening actually to do it. This is the very reason many people voted for him: They expect him to be a doer, not just a talker.

Should President Trump succeed in relocating our embassy to Jerusalem, I predict three things: 1. all hell will break loose against him (expect it in the most shrill tones), with constant, worldwide controversy over the move), 2. God will bless our president for doing it; and 3) God will bless America for doing it.

There's just something about Jerusalem. Watch and see. (And to think that as recently as last month, an article in the Washingon Post claimed that, "Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump's campaign. It's the melody." The irony is exquisite.)</s>On Wednesday night, after it became clear that the United States was ready to allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to Twitter to urge the Obama administration to veto the measure. Soon after, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted an almost verbatim message, "The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed," linking to a Facebook post. On Thursday, Egypt, which sponsored the resolution, pulled it for unclear reasons.

A senior Israeli official tells CNN that the Israeli government called Trump to ask him to put pressure on President Obama, after its own efforts failed. A Western official said Israel pressured Egypt to withdraw the resolution as well, and an official in the Trump transition told Reuters that Trump also spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about the U.N. resolution. Traditionally, presidents-elect don't try to set policy. "It's unprecedented that a president-elect would pronounce on a matter of U.S. policy before he became president," said Arab-Israeli expert Aaron David Miller, "let alone say publicly that the administration should not vote for the resolution."

Trump wasn't certain he should publicly intervene with the tweet and subsequent statement, The Washington Post reports, but he was persuaded by some close advisers:

After initial hesitation on whether Trump should weigh in, the statement was written late Wednesday by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and an influential adviser to the president-elect, and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, according to two people briefed on the deliberation who were not authorized to speak publicly. They said that Kushner and Bannon consulted with several allies in Israel and the United States but declined to name them. The effort represented perhaps Kushner's most significant foray to date into foreign policy and the Middle East, where Trump has said he would welcome his son-in-law's involvement. [The Washington Post]

On Twitter, former George W. Bush administration official David Frum tried to put in perspective how unusual this premature policymaking is: "In Dec. 2008, in the midst of worst financial crisis since 1929, Barack Obama meticulously deferred to the one-president-at-a-time rule." You can learn more about the case of the U.N. resolution in the CNN report below.</s>Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump isn't waiting until Inauguration Day to assert his posture on foreign policy, even in areas plainly at odds with the sitting commander-in-chief.

On sensitive issues of diplomacy and national security, Trump has displayed a continued willingness to pressure and contradict President Barack Obama, eschewing a "one president at a time" policy that Obama insists must govern the peaceful transition of power.

The most forceful example came Thursday, as diplomats at the United Nations were preparing for a vote in the Security Council on a resolution rebuking Israel for its settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In a morning statement, Trump urged Obama to reject the measure, arguing it "puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis."

The vote was postponed. But at the time Trump's statement emerged, the Obama administration was still debating whether to abstain and let the measure pass, a gesture that would have been in line with the White House's vocal objections to settlement activity on lands claimed by the Palestinians.

Trump's team informed Obama administration officials ahead of time they were planning to release the statement, according to Jason Miller, a transition spokesman. A national security spokesman for the White House declined to characterize how the message was received.

But administration officials privately say the move, paired with a string of public splits between Trump and Obama, runs afoul of a longstanding custom observed by past incoming presidents to withhold statements or remarks that might be seen as contradictory to the sitting administration.

Some analysts warn the persistent divides over Israel and other global flashpoints could perplex global allies as they await a new commander-in-chief.

"The President-elect clearly is determined to show through any number of moves during the transition that, in effect, there's going to be a sharp break with the policy toward Israel of his predecessor," said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a CNN global affairs analyst.

"I think this is unprecedented for a President-elect during a transition to openly oppose an act of diplomacy at the UN in real-time in an administration," Miller said. "It's remarkable."

During Obama's own transition to power in 2008, he withheld extensive public comment about flashes of violence in the Middle East and terror attacks in India that occurred as President George W. Bush was concluding his term.

Bush's aides even invited Obama to participate in a Group of 20 meeting held in Washington shortly after he was elected President. Obama's team -- which at the time was developing an economic recovery plan that differed from Bush's proposals -- concluded his presence at the summit could send contradictory signals to global allies.

Trump, meanwhile, has shown little signs of concern about sending mixed signals about US policy to overseas allies. He's offered foreign policy prescriptions on Twitter and in public remarks that differ from Obama's approach. And he's claimed to be openly negotiating government contracts before he takes office.

This week alone has seen Trump meet with top members of the US military at his Florida estate, followed by a session with the chief executives of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Trump had lambasted the cost of projects those firms are completing for the US government, later claiming credit during a rally for negotiating down the costs of a new presidential aircraft.

On Thursday he tweeted the US "must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," a break from Obama's own policy of reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles. Later, a spokesman clarified Trump was referencing "the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it."

The most glaring divide between the incoming and outgoing administrations: Trump's stance on Russia, who the US accuses of meddling in the presidential election. Trump has questioned the intelligence that led to that assessment, leading to a combative public spat between his transition team and the White House.

Disputes over how to handle China have also emerged. When China seized a US underwater drone in international waters this week, the President-elect responded forcefully on Twitter, including making suggestions to the current administration on how to proceed.

"We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!" Trump wrote. The drone was returned earlier this week.

The messages came after another diplomatic scuffle prompted by Trump's phone conversation with the leader of Taiwan, a move that broke decades of US diplomatic precedent and sparked bombast in Beijing.

Obama himself brushed off the incident in a press conference last week, indicting that Trump's move in itself wasn't necessarily harmful.

But he advised his successor to carefully weigh the consequences of his actions, and insisted that US foreign policy was still under his control for another month.

"What I've advised the President-elect is that across the board on foreign policy, you want to make sure that you're doing it in a systematic, deliberate, intentional way," Obama said. "And since there's only one President at a time, my advice to him has been that before he starts having a lot of interactions with foreign governments other than the usual courtesy calls, that he should want to have his full team in place, that he should want his team to be fully briefed."</s>Egypt agreed to postpone a vote on a UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements after US President-elect Donald Trump called President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president's office said.

Egypt had circulated the draft late on Wednesday, demanding Israel halt settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, and a vote was initially scheduled for Thursday.

But it requested that the resolution be postponed after Israel launched a frantic lobbying effort, including calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the US to use its veto power at the Security Council to block the resolution.

On Friday, Sisi's spokesman said the two leaders agreed to allow Trump's incoming administration a chance to tackle the issue.

"During the call, they discussed regional affairs and developments in the Middle East, and in that context the draft resolution in front of the Security Council on Israeli settlement," said spokesman Alaa Yousef.

"The presidents agreed on the importance of affording the new US administration the full chance to deal with all dimensions of the Palestinian case with a view of achieving a full and final settlement."

A similar resolution was vetoed by the US in 2011.

Earlier, diplomats from New Zealand, Venezuela, Malaysia and Senegal told Egypt that if it did not clarify on whether it planned to call the vote, they would press ahead without Cairo's involvement.

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, had called on Washington to use its veto to block the resolution.

"The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed," the Republican said in a statement released hours ahead of the scheduled vote.

OPINION: Trump and Israel

"As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations.

"This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis," Trump added.

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and seen as a major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on Palestinian land occupied by Israel.

The United Nations maintains settlements are illegal, but UN officials have reported a surge in construction over the past months.

Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, areas Israel occupied in a 1967 war.

Israel disputes that settlements are illegal and says their final status should be determined in any future talks on Palestinian statehood.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump calls President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, who then agrees to postpone a United Nations resolution regarding Israel.