Many international and regional powers accepted the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo after the presidential elections of June 2012. They initiated deals and arrangements with the regime, both medium and long-term, concerning a host of important Arab and regional questions. But these powers had not factored into their calculations and forecasts that Egyptians, in their millions, would take to the streets in an unprecedented popular upheaval against dictatorial rule with certain democratic credentials. The international and regional reactions that followed were hasty, shallow in terms of Egyptian politics and history, and downright unacceptable, particularly on the part of the US administration, the European Union, and their regional and Arab allies. These powers considered the political conse-quences of the 30 June Revolution to be a coup by the army and dealt with the new regime in Cairo as a usurper of power. In the second half of 2013, the Egyptian question became a very delicate game of nations, where the alliance of fortune that had bet on the previous regime in Cairo exercised all sorts of pressure and public posturing on the new Egyptian government that enjoyed tremendous popular support. Not only Western governments and their regional allies played this game, but also a host of influential newspapers, American think tanks, and many Western non-governmental organisations funded, in part, by Islamic associations. This was done either under the umbrella of the Muslim Brotherhood or affiliated with what is known as the International Organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which went into high gear to destabilise the new Egyptian government with direct and public support from the Erdogan government in Ankara, and, to a lesser extent, the Qatari government. Never before has Egypt been faced with such a powerful array of international and regional forces against it, in a determined policy of destabilisation aimed, ultimately, to turn back the clock and force the Egyptian government to reintegrate the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian politics, disregarding the growing popular disenchantment of the Egyptian people with the forces of political Islam in the country. Egypt's first line of defence in facing this ad-hoc alliance has been the Foreign Ministry. Egyptian diplomacy has been playing a great and effective role in countering the manoeuvres of this alliance, both during the first government of post-30 June Egypt, headed by Hazem Al-Beblawi, and the second government of Ibrahim Mahlab, which was sworn in after the election of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in June 2014. The first foreign minister in the post-30 June government was Ambassador Nabil Fahmi, the former Egyptian ambassador to Washington, from 1999 to 2008, and a highly distinguished Egyptian diplomat. Both his professional experience and wide contacts in the United States allowed him to steer Egyptian diplomacy in the second half of 2013 in the right course, exerting determined efforts to defend and protect Egyptian interests. Egyptian diplomacy, under his stewardship, acted on various fronts to project the new post-30 June Egypt. And if I may borrow a term from one of Richard Wagner's operas, he was Egypt's Flying Dutchman, who flew north and south, east and west, to realise several important goals. The first was to break the international and regional alliance against Cairo after the June revolution, and to work tirelessly not only to face the sanctions regimes that Egypt was subject to, be they African, American or European, but also to lessen the impact on the Egyptian government at a time when it needed to muster maximum international and regional support. The second objective was to counter the false allegations that were fuelled by the Muslim Brotherhood, aided by the Erdogan government, that Egypt had experienced a military coup. The third objective was to marshal the support of growing numbers of countries around the world to the Egyptian point of view. It goes without saying that the generous aid, be it economic, financial or political, of the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco has lent Egypt much-needed Arab support which proved invaluable to Egyptian diplomacy between July and November 2013, when US Secretary of State John Kerry stopped over in Cairo to meet his Egyptian counterpart, Ambassador Fahmi, in the first high-level visit by an US official after the June revolution. In the press conference that followed their talks, Secretary Kerry made clear that the United States supported the transition to democracy in Egypt, adding that the US administration had agreed to start a “strategic dialogue” with Egypt. These statements proved to be a turning point in the way the United States approached the new political set-up in Cairo, and were proof that Washington was ready to deal with the Egyptian government formed under the new democratic roadmap announced on 3 July 2013. As far as Africa is concerned, Egyptian diplomacy succeeded in dealing with a host of questions that had marred the course of Egyptian-African relations, including the suspension of Egypt from the African Union. Our relations with Ethiopia in 2012 reached new lows because of the way the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies grossly mishandled the question of the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam. The repercussions of threatening the use of force against Ethiopia reverberated across the African continent. Also, our relations with the Nile Basin countries needed mending. I believe that the visits of Fahmi to East and West Africa when he was foreign minister paved the way for later breakthroughs in Egyptian-African relations. These were capped with Egypt resuming its participation in the African Union and the attendance of President Al-Sisi in the African Summit in Equa-torial Guinea in July 2014. Egyptian-Ethiopian relations improved, despite the persistence of differences concerning the Renaissance Dam. The summit meeting that took place between President Al-Sisi and the Ethiopian prime minister in Malibu, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, during the African Summit of last July broke the ice, and hopefully will help both countries reach a compromise solution concerning their differences related to the dam. The other crucial breakthrough in Egyptian diplomacy came in the second half of 2013 with the joint visit by the Russian foreign and defence ministers to Cairo in November 2013, and the return visit by their Egyptian counterparts to Moscow in February 2014. President Al-Sisi was still the Egyptian defence minister, and was accompanied by Fahmi, the then Egyptian foreign minister. These two visits, in the span of a three-month period, together with President Al-Sisi's visit to the Russian capital after his election, represent, in my opinion, a watershed in Egyptian foreign policy, the long-term impact of which will be felt in the years to come. These diplomatic successes from July 2013 to July 2014 were the cornerstones for the later achievements in Egyptian diplomacy starting from July 2014 with the government of Engineer Mahlab and the appointment of Ambassador Sameh Shukri as foreign minister. Like his predecessor, he is a former ambassador to the United States, having served from 2008 to 2012. The latter period has seen three major diplomatic developments that provide Egypt with a much greater role and influence on the international scene. The first is the setting up of the international coalition to defeat the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation. Egypt signed the Jeddah Communiqué of 11 September 2014 that brought together Western and Arab countries to fight this organisation. In October, the Egyptian army chief of staff took part in a meeting in Washington of the chiefs of staff of member countries of the international alliance. The second development took place on 19 November 2014, when both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in an exchange of appeals and pledges, committed to work for the implementation of the Riyadh Accord among member states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a reconciliation effort that would include Arab countries and try to end the Egyptian-Qatari rift. It is my understanding that contacts between the governments of Egypt and Qatar took place sometime this year to chart a new course for Egyptian-Qatari relations. In the months to come we could see concrete steps to improve relations between the two countries. The third major development in Egyptian foreign policy, one that should be taken as proof that Egypt has successfully turned the corner, is the European tour of President Al-Sisi that took place 24-27 November 2014. During the tour, he visited Italy and France, and met His Holiness Pope Francis at the Vatican. These were the first European visits of the new Egyptian president to member states in the European Union, and other visits are expected to follow. The two visits to Italy and France were preceded, three weeks before, by an unprecedented trilateral summit hosted by Cairo, bringing together Greece, Cyprus and Egypt in a new strategic partnership in the eastern Mediterranean. The three preceding developments, as well as, the trilateral summit, have proven that Egypt has become, once again, a major strategic player in the Middle East, the Arab world and the Mediterranean, and has the vision, resources and allies to forge anew an active foreign policy to protect and defend its national interests and project its power and influence in the changing regional and Arab context. The challenging and tireless efforts of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry from July 2013 till today should be acknowledged. The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
