Mubarak Comes to Washington

Schenker & co. at WINEP, here

"... The Bright Side: Mutual Interests

Despite this worsening human rights picture, .....

Palestinian politics. Egypt has been working for months to convince Hamas to join a Palestinian national unity government, ........, Egypt has worked to increase pressure on Hamas by preventing the transfer of funds and weapons into Gaza. This past spring, Egyptian police interdicted some $12 million dollars that Hamas was attempting to smuggle into Gaza. Israeli media sources also suggest that lately Egypt is playing a more robust role in cracking down on smuggling tunnels.

Countering Iran. In April 2009, Cairo announced the arrest of twenty-five members of a forty-nine-person Hizballah cell that was allegedly smuggling weapons to Hamas, targeting Israeli tourists in the Sinai, and conducting preoperational planning against Suez Canal shipping.......

But the most obvious manifestation of Egypt's stand against Iran has been its overt support for the transit of Israeli warships through the Suez Canal. Earlier this summer, Cairo allowed an Israeli dolphin-class submarine to travel from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, followed a short while later by the Israeli missile cruisers Hanit and Eilat. This development was by no means unprecedented -- Israeli naval assets have long been permitted to pass the canal. But the timing of these latest deployments, as well as the publicity surrounding them, suggests a burgeoning Egyptian strategic coordination with Israel against Tehran.

Each step taken by Cairo on these critical issues has advanced Egyptian national security interests. Although these measures were not taken as a favor to the United States, the Obama administration has reciprocated by eliminating nearly all rhetoric on governance and by returning to the status quo ante on foreign aid to Egypt. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made no mention of the subject during her Sharm al-Sheikh speech in March 2009, and when asked about human rights in Egypt during an interview with al-Arabiya, she responded, "We all have room for improvement. The United States ... is moving to remedy some of the problems that we have had. We view human rights as very important ... and so we want to enlist others to make progress." In a dramatic shift from the Bush-era practice, the Obama White House has likewise not protested a single arrest in Cairo --or anywhere else in the Arab world. Moreover, the administration has promised additional aid in future years while slashing funding for democracy promotion in Egypt by more than 60 percent and assistance to civil society in particular by more than 75 percent.

President Mubarak comes to Washington during the dog days of summer, with the capital a virtual ghost town. Nonetheless, that the presidential summit is actually taking place demonstrates a dramatic about-face in U.S.-Egyptian relations since Obama's election. The meeting also represents a qualified achievement for Cairo: the Obama administration may be turning to Egypt in response to the cool, even dismissive, reaction to the administration's many initiatives from Saudi Arabia, the preferred partner of the Bush administration.

For Washington, the summit's success will be more difficult to measure. Beyond potentially hosting yet another Sharm al-Sheikh peace conference, the administration's expectations of Egypt remain unclear..."