The dust is already settling in Tahrir Square, allowing us a glimpse of the political realities beginning to emerge in the new Middle East. Three recent events reveal how the region’s delicate balance of power -- stuck in a general holding pattern for decades -- has changed.
Last week, Iranian warships completed their first voyage through Egypt’s Suez Canal since 1979, when the Iranian revolution brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power and Egypt signed its historic peace treaty with Israel, giving rise to the bitter Cairo–Tehran rivalry.
#ad#Two days later in Istanbul, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak told me in an interview that the Muslim Brotherhood should not be part of the governing process in Egypt unless they completely renounce violence. At the same time, the Jordanian monarchy was grappling with the demands of its country’s Brotherhood chapter, the Islamic Action Front, which was attempting to replicate Cairo in Amman.
And the return of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa projected to the world the image of an Egypt looking to reclaim its past glory.
Enemies of the Revolution
“Any form of political relations with Hosni Mubarak is tantamount to getting digested into the system prepared and designed by America and Zionism in the region.”
This Iranian newspaper quote, as Ray Takeyh pointed out in Hidden Iran, neatly summarized the Islamic Republic’s attitude toward Egypt. Those who considered themselves the “guardians of the revolution” saw Egypt as the leading force working against them. One reason for this perception was Egypt’s ostensibly secular police state, which to the Iranians was in direct contravention of what the mullahs had established and were attempting to export.
Though Syria also fit that description, the Baathist regime of Hafez al-Assad was unrelenting in its opposition to the recognition and survival of the Jewish state next door, while Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel was, in the eyes of the Islamic revolutionaries, religious and political treason.
The wound deepened when Egypt, seeking to reclaim some of its credibility as pan-Arab champion, supported Iraq in the Iran–Iraq war. In 1980 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat also welcomed the deposed Iranian shah to Egypt, where he died and was given a state funeral. The Iranians, in turn, named a street after Khalid Islambouli, Sadat’s assassin, and continued to fund and encourage Islamist anti-Mubarak groups within Egypt.
The two countries never reconciled, and the rivalry -- especially since Egypt stood as a secular bulwark against the spread of the Islamic revolution -- maintained an important balance in the Mideast.
#page#Does the Egyptian defense ministry’s approval for the transit of Iranian warships in the Suez mean the two are coming to terms? Not necessarily. Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, said the ships may indicate that for now, Egypt is far too disorganized to stand up to Tehran’s bullying.
But once Egypt is strong enough to stand on her own two feet again, she may challenge Iran’s bid for Islamic hegemony in the region. Though theoretically the balance would be restored, it would be between two unstable and unreliable nations, as far as the West is concerned. “Just because Egypt and Iran compete, it doesn’t necessarily accrue to our benefit,” Berman said.
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‘The death of Arabism’
At the 2010 AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C., Dr. Asher Susser joined Elliott Abrams and Bret Stephens on a panel on the future of Mideast leadership. A region whose ideology and actions were once defined by Egypt, Syria, and Iraq was now led by Iran, Turkey, and Israel, he said. “The Sunni Arab core of the Middle East is contracting; the space they’re leaving is being filled by non-Arabs.”
“Arab nationalism was a platform for secular politics,” Susser lamented. “The death of Arabism, the decline of the Arab states, is also the undoing of secular politics in the Arab world.”
That was true at the time, and in fact held up until this year’s uprisings. But the decline of the Arab world was likely halted by the revolution in Egypt, and the rise of the new Arab world is underway. What is almost certain is that the character of the new Arab leadership will be decidedly less secular than that of its predecessors.
Whether Egypt will reclaim its glory as a regional power remains to be seen, and is surely contingent in part on the outcomes in Libya, Tunisia, and other states in flux after the wave of popular protests. But the governing coalitions that result from the people-power that overthrew Mubarak and began the countdown to Moammar Qaddafi’s exit from Libya will be forces to be reckoned with on the international stage. At the very least they will command respect from other regimes still in place and desperately clinging to a stability they once took for granted.
Add to that the return of pan-Arab bureaucrats like Moussa, authoritative and charismatic Islamic giants like Qaradawi, and groups with domestic and transnational networks of support like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the new Egypt is much more likely to challenge the dominance of Iran and Turkey than to emulate them. (Though the two possibilities -- challenging and emulating -- are not necessarily mutually exclusive.)
“The revolution isn’t over. It has just started to build Egypt,” Qaradawi told the crowd in Tahrir Square on February 18. For his part, Moussa told the Financial Times: “There is a new hope. Egypt after January 25 is different altogether from the one before -- the self-confidence [has] come to the people of Egypt.”
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‘Terrorize thereby the enemy of God and your enemy’
But Qaradawi is not for everyone in the Islamic world.
“I would like to see that Qaradawi and other leaders would reject violence and extremism,” Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak told me last week in Istanbul. “And for them to be -- if they want to be -- part of this political process, they should totally reject violence and extremism.”
Najib said the same about the Muslim Brotherhood, but with Qaradawi as its spiritual compass, it will be increasingly difficult for the organization to appear moderate. Qaradawi has praised Hitler, repeatedly called for terrorism against the West, and posited that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Muslim states for use against their adversaries would fulfill the Koranic exhortation “to terrorize thereby the enemy of God and your enemy.”
#ad#While Najib was the only Muslim leader to publicly express these reservations, his comments provide a window into the anxieties felt in the countries with an active affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Jordan, for example, has done its best to keep its battle with the Islamic Action Front as quiet as possible.
But as Asaf Romirowsky noted in The National Interest, the water is coming to a boil faster in Jordan than it appears. According to Romirowsky, the Islamic Action Front commands between 20 and 30 percent support -- a not-insignificant amount. Combine that with the fact that Jordan’s population is about 70 percent Palestinian, and you can understand why King Abdullah II would be feeling claustrophobic.
The king is unlikely to lose control of his country. But if Abdullah is spooked enough by the protests he may, Romirowsky suggests, allow “the Brotherhood, together with its Palestinian supporters, to have a controlling stake in Jordan’s governance. This would create a joint Palestinian–Brotherhood stronghold in Jordan.”
In our interview, Najib didn’t hide his concern for the rising tide of Brotherhood support that extends to his country, nearly 5,000 miles from Tahrir Square. The concern in the Muslim world, then, is not that the Brotherhood will gain a majority in Egypt’s next elections and immediately command the country’s armed forces, but that a powerful and popular opposition force is now out of the shadows.
How this will affect other Brotherhood-affiliated and Islamist parties like Morocco’s Justice and Development party (PJD), which suffered a surprisingly disappointing defeat at the polls in 2007, is one example of the many questions kings, analysts, intelligence bureaus, and journalists will all be seeking to answer in the coming days and months.
It’s a new Middle East, and it’s time to get acquainted with it.
--- Seth Mandel is a foreign-affairs writer specializing in the Middle East.
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