One can take heart from this week’s
Wikileaks revelations about how intensely
Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s new vice-president and former intelligence
chief, dislikes both homegrown Egyptian and Iranian
Islamists.
Regarding the domestic Muslim Brotherhood, Suleiman in
2006 told FBI director Robert Mueller that they had spawned “11
different Islamist extremist organizations” and that “the principal
danger…was [their] exploitation of religion to influence and
mobilize the public.”
As for Iran, in 2007 and 2008 Suleiman called its regime
“devils” and “a significant threat to Egypt” and said “Iran is
supporting Jihad and spoiling peace, and has supported extremists
in Egypt previously. If they were to support the Muslim Brotherhood
this would make them ‘our enemy.’”
Less heartening, though, is the fact that Suleiman already
met with the banned Brotherhood, along with other groups, over the
weekend and offered them a package of concessions — which they
appear to have turned down contemptuously.
A swift, alarming capitulation by Suleiman and his boss
Hosni Mubarak, or a deft handling of the situation aimed at keeping
the Islamists at bay? Though it is hard to know, given Suleiman’s
background as an unsentimental Middle Eastern intelligence chief,
the latter seems more likely.
Also on the — relatively — heartening side of the ledger
is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warning
on Monday against forcing Mubarak out while stressing the
need for an “orderly transition.” It seems a slight improvement
over her boss, President Barack Obama, taking
an “instant-democracy” line on Egypt on Sunday and
downplaying the threat that the Brotherhood poses.
One place where no one is taking chances is Israel, where
Suleiman has been a frequent visitor to meet with top officials,
and where the Mubarak regime’s three-decade adherence to
nonbelligerence with Israel — enhanced more recently by tacit
strategic cooperation — is understood across the political
spectrum as the priceless asset for stability that it
is.
According to the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty,
Israel is supposed to import a considerable share of its natural
gas from Egypt. On Saturday an Egyptian gas terminal in the Sinai
blew up, sparking a massive blaze that could only be stopped by
shutting off the gas flow to both Israel and Jordan.
Although Egypt’s natural gas company blamed the fire on a
gas leak, the Jerusalem Post
cites “local officials” in Israel as saying
saboteurs — almost certainly Islamist terrorists exploiting the
chaos in Egypt — were responsible.
The incident concentrated minds wonderfully, prompting
calls to speed up development of gas fields recently
discovered off Israel’s coast. One
parliamentarian
warned that “Israel’s energy economy must take
into account a scenario of no gas deliveries from
Egypt.”
No doubt, Israel’s concerns about what is happening in
Egypt go well beyond a cutoff of gas supplies. It is one thing to
look from afar and see “democracy protesters” in the streets of
Cairo, a noble cause to be supported.
It is another thing, though, to live in this region and be
exposed to its harshness all the time. Israelis also remember the
democracy protesters — in that case, unquestionably unified and
authentic — in Lebanon in 2006, and the Bush administration’s
insistence that same year on holding elections in the Palestinian
territories. Israelis know that Lebanon is now run by Hezbollah and
Gaza by Hamas, and that in both cases a regional dynamic favoring
Islamism prevailed over good — whether local or foreign —
intentions.
The repression used by a regime like Mubarak’s is not
pretty, but no worse than that used by the Shah’s regime in Iran
before — to the cheers of Western leftists including President
Jimmy Carter — it was replaced by the much worse reign of the
ayatollahs. Those whose moral sensibilities are offended by Omar
Suleiman need to have a look at Muhammad Badi, the Muslim
Brotherhood leader who, as
noted by Israeli Middle East scholar Barry
Rubin, “has endorsed anti-American Jihad and pretty much every
element in the al-Qaida ideology book.”
Obama’s talk of a pluralist democracy sprouting in Egypt
— by September at the latest — ignores the reality of a largely
illiterate populace lacking democratic institutions, where the
Muslim Brotherhood forms the only strong, organized opposition to
the regime in part because of its great appeal to that intensely
religious populace. Impulsively backing the “protesters,” nudging
Mubarak-Suleiman out whether roughly or more gently, means
reigniting Israeli-Egyptian conflict and handing a huge victory to
the radical forces in the region.
