Egypt sees in Trump a close ally it can count on

Abdel Fattah El Sisi told US president-elect he looks forward to working together

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, left, with then-US President Donald Trump in Riyadh in 2019. AP

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi quickly welcomed Donald Trump's US election victory on Wednesday with a social media post that did little to hide the leader's relief at the former president's return to the White House.

Egypt has been among Washington's closest Arab allies for close to 50 years, a relationship founded when Cairo exited the Soviet camp during the height of the Cold War in the 1970s and embraced the US as its main foreign benefactor and backer.

A generous US economic and military aid package of more than $1 billion a year that continues to this day has tightened Cairo's relations with Washington since Egypt became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 in a US-brokered deal still viewed widely as a cornerstone of regional stability.

However, the relationship between Egyptian and US Presidents varied from one administration to the next.

In 2018, Mr Trump praised Egyptian leader El Sisi for doing “a fantastic job” and said the US was “very much behind” him. Egypt's pro-government media speaks of Mr Trump as a strong leader who treats the nation with respect and values Mr El Sisi's leadership.

This contrasted sharply with Mr El Sisi's relations with former President Barack Obama, who never invited the Egyptian President to the White House and whose administration repeatedly admonished Cairo over human rights issues and was accused by Egypt's state-controlled media of supporting Islamists.

Mr El Sisi, a former army general who took office in 2014, visited the White House twice during Mr Trump's time in office, between 2017 and 2020.

An Egyptian source close to the government said US Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris “would have been a carbon copy of Barack Obama and his agenda”.

“We can deal with Trump and do business with him,” added the source.

The Blue Nile feeding the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a project that has become a thorny political issue. Reuters / Nasa

The Egyptian President first met Mr Trump in September 2016 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Mr Trump had secured the Republican nomination, under which he won the election two months later and entered the White House the following January.

The pair have since met six times publicly, cementing the bond they forged initially.

Distinguished co-operation

“I offer my sincerest congratulations to US president-elect Donald Trump and wish him every success in realising the interests of the American people,” Mr El Sisi wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “I look forward to reaching peace together and safeguarding regional peace and stability.”

He added that Egypt and the US “have long offered a model of co-operation and succeeded together in realising the joint interests of the two friendly nations; and that's what we look forward to continuing amid the delicate circumstances the world is going through”.

Mr El Sisi underscored the close relations he had with Mr Trump during his first term in office when he spoke to him on the phone on Wednesday night.

“Egypt looks forward to completing the joint endeavours with President Trump during his next term in view of the strategic nature of bilateral relations … and the distinguished co-operation between the two sides during his first term in office,” a statement from Mr El Sisi's office quoted the Egyptian leader as saying to Mr Trump.

Authorities in Egypt, said the source, had urged voters from the estimated 250,000 Egyptians living in the US to support the Republican candidate, while coverage of US election campaigning by state-controlled media in Egypt has shown a clear slant in favour of Mr Trump.

Top of Egypt's wish list is for Washington to put enough pressure on Ethiopia to agree to a legally binding deal on the filling and operation of the dam it is close to finishing building on the Nile, a multibillion-dollar project Cairo insists will adversely affect its vital share of the river's water.

Abdel Fattah El Sisi, left, and Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed chat during a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa. EPA

The Trump administration successfully brokered an agreement between Ethiopia on one side, and Egypt and neighbouring downstream nation Sudan, in 2020, only for Addis Ababa to back out at the last minute and not sign the deal.

Ethiopia has since rejected various suggestions made by Egypt and Sudan to resolve the dispute, which Cairo views as existential because it depends on the Nile for 97 per cent of its freshwater needs.

Attempting to underline the gravity of the threat posed by the dam to Egypt's interests, Mr Trump in 2020 said Cairo could end up “blowing up the dam”. Later that year, his administration suspended part of its financial aid to Ethiopia in protest over the perceived lack of progress on talks on the project with Sudan and Egypt.

Mr El Sisi asked the US two years later to help persuade Ethiopia to agree to a deal on the dam but nothing came of the request made to Secretary of State Antony Blinken when the pair met on the sidelines of a US-Africa summit in Washington.

Ending the war

Mr Trump's election win on Wednesday comes at a time when US-Egyptian relations are at their closest in decades, with Egypt and fellow US ally Qatar working closely alongside Washington to broker an end to the war in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas in the besieged enclave.

That, according to Michael Hanna, New York-based director of the US programme at the International Crisis Group, means that any shift in US-Egyptian relations under Mr Trump will not be as dramatic as it was when the republican candidate succeeded Mr Obama in 2017.

“Things are very different now. The Joe Biden administration this year decided to give Egypt its full annual $1.3 billion in military aid without any human rights-linked conditions,” Mr Hanna told The National.

Nonetheless, Egypt-US relations are expected to grow even closer with Mr Trump in the White House but there are low expectations over what he can quickly do to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, which have claimed tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese lives and caused widespread damage.

Mr Trump, who will be sworn in January, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had forged close ties during the previous Republican administration of 2017-2021, with the then-US leader opting to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, after recognising the latter as Israel's unified capital in a move that angered Arab nations, including Egypt.

However, Cairo will look to the incoming Trump administration to actively try to resolve its dispute with Israel over the capture by the Israeli military of the Salah Al Din route (also known as the Philadelphi Corridor), a strip that runs the entire length of the Palestinian side of the Egypt-Gaza border, where the Rafah crossing is located.

Egypt insists this move breaches the 1979 treaty and relevant accords, and poses a threat to its national security.

“Nothing will happen for Gaza and Lebanon until after Trump moves to the White House,” said another source also close to the government in Cairo. “And that will perhaps fit in with Netanyahu's plans to create buffer zones in northern Gaza and southern Lebanon.”

By January, said Mr Hanna, the Israeli prime minister might be ready to gift Mr Trump an end to the war in Gaza and Lebanon that the republican can claim as an early victory for his administration.