Sisi may find like mind in Trump in anti-Islamist fight

Egypt’s president beat all other world leaders to the punch when he became the first to call Donald Trump to congratulate him on his election, Bloomberg reported.

Abdel Fattah El Sisi will log another first on Monday when he becomes the first Arab head of state to visit the Trump White House. 

The objective, the administration has said, is to rebuild relations strained during the Obama years by Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, whose 2013 ouster from power Sisi led.

For Sisi, a warm embrace by the new U.S. leader, who shares his antipathy toward political Islam, could provide the financial and military support he needs to revive his country’s economy and to restore its standing as a regional power broker. In addition to seeking to preserve the $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion in economic and military aid Egypt gets annually from Washington, he’ll be pushing the U.S. to declare Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, a move it’s considering, analysts said.

Sisi’s “main motive in relation to political Islam is saying they’re all terrorists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ziad Akl, senior researcher at the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said in an interview. He and Trump are likely to “see eye-to-eye that there’s no political Islam that’s moderate or not moderate, and this will come down on the heads of the Brotherhood.”

The meeting between the two leaders comes at a critical time for Sisi. Months after currency exchange restrictions were lifted, annual inflation has shot up to over 30 percent and the pound’s value has halved against the dollar. The budget deficit is one of the highest in the Middle East. Islamist militants haven’t been quashed by an intensified campaign against them.

Support from Trump, including an affirmation of Egypt’s Middle East standing, would provide Sisi’s policies with a strong measure of validation domestically and regionally, said Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Sisi “will finally get the big hug that he has wanted from Washington” since the 2013 overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Trager said.

Presidential spokesman Alaa Youssef said in comments carried in the state-run Ahram newspaper Monday that the visit affords Sisi the chance to lay out for the Trump administration the reality of the situation in Egypt.

Trump will also meet this week with King Abdullah II of Jordan, while Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House in March. The talks with the Jordanian monarch are expected to focus on other regional issues, including Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, that Sisi is also expected to raise.

Egyptians have toppled two presidents since 2011, so ensuring social stability in his impoverished country at a time of deepening economic need is a prime concern for Sisi, even as his government battles a militant threat in the north Sinai Peninsula. As he juggles both challenges, he’s argued that security takes precedence over a commitment to human rights.

Source: MENA