The Egyptian Economy and the Elections

I believe that Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has a greater chance to win the elections, than his adversaries, as he has proven to the Egyptians that he is a capable man. I believe that the people like him, as they saw that he saved the country from becoming a fanatic religious country like Iran. The economy is now suffering and the entire industry is stagnating. In my view, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi is able to revive the Egyptian economy if he follows his close neighbor Israel, which is a vibrant country and has an excellent economy. As president, the General will succeed in the long run. In the medium run, he has first to stabilize the security and give the country a good direction. He may succeed better than anyone else as we could see until now that his behavior was a calculated risk and he had clarity about what he was doing. He realized that the Obama Administration did not support him in chasing the Muslim Brotherhood government because it did not see that Morsi was leading Egypt in a direction towards radical Islamism. Morsi had already organized groups in the Sinai, along with Hamas to have leverage in case he needed it, to be able to successfully challenge the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula. Those operations in the Sinai, once in a while directed against Israel, have made Israel aware and led it to increase its vigilance and to check out what was going on in the Sinai. They found different groups of terrorists operating with the help of Hamas. I believe that the Israelis have probably warned their neighbor army on what was going on with these groups, and made it aware. The Obama Administration did not see this and wanted Morsi to finish his term as president. In my view this is in line with today’s position of our government that Iran is not a threat, that they should have their nuclear development continue, as long as they don’t make atom bombs, and that they should be trusted, as per Susan Rice, according to today’s news. The US purposely does not insist that Iran withdraw its threats against Israel, or at least, this is how it seems. In reference to the economy, in the long term, Egypt will be helped by a few nations, among which, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Germany, and this will open the doors for other Europeans countries to step in economically as well. The US pushed Egypt towards Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Maybe not intentionally, but in fact. According to the news I read so far, Israel foresaw the situation in Iraq, the same way it now sees the threat Iran poses, as being very real. We should not forget that Israel is dealing with democratic states. But the Obama Administration sees it differently from the four previous administrations. Over the years, Obama was saying to the Israelis and to the Saudis that everything would be on the table. Today I found out that Susan Rice had a meeting in Israel with Netanyahu and what she told him created a deep divide between the Obama Administration and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the Iranian nuclear situation. I just hope that Obama will keep his word towards the Middle Eastern countries. Copyright 2014 Emile Tubiana