President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi returned Saturday, 3 December, from a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates where he participated in the official celebration of that country's independence. Relations between Cairo and Abu Dhabi have grown by leaps and bounds since 1971, particularly under the leadership and guidance of the founder of the country, the late Sheikh Zayed Al-Naheyan. And in recognition of his friendship and generous aid and assistance to Egypt in the post-October War era, several cities throughout Egypt are named after him. Bilateral relations between the two countries have been growing further after President Al-Sisi came to power in June 2014. During Muslim Brotherhood rule, from 2012 to 2013, relations between Cairo and Abu Dhabi had taken a nosedive after Emirati authorities discovered a Muslim Brotherhood recruiting cell liaising with similar cells throughout the Gulf. The role of Qatar in this master plan is still undocumented. Members of the cell were arrested and put on trial, even before the overthrow of the former president Mohamed Morsi. The whole episode was a bombshell and put Egypt on the spot. It was a very embarrassing situation, and may be considered one of the many reasons that led Egyptians to take to the streets to bring this rule to an abrupt end. Al-Sisi's visit has underlined the importance that the two countries have attached to their bilateral relations. These relations have become more important and more relevant in the wake of the announcement by Aramco, the Saudi-American oil company, that it will halt monthly shipments of oil products to Egypt until further notice. The arrangement was such whereby Egypt would receive oil products worth $20 billion during five years to be paid on credit by 2023. The agreement was announced during the official visit of the Saudi monarch to Egypt in April 2016. A point that was not debated nor analysed was the fact that the Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines, King Salman bin Abdel-Aziz, had flown from Cairo directly to Turkey on an official visit. Observers thought at the time that the Saudi king was mediating between Egypt and Turkey to bring to an end a political feud that erupted after the overthrow of Morsi in July 2013. In retrospect, the visit to Turkey was meant as a message that the Saudis have put their respective relations with both Egypt and Turkey on an equal footing, with serious strategic implications for Egyptian-Saudi relations, on the one hand, and Egyptian-Gulf relations, on the other. The message was lost at the time but came back to life with the announcement of the halt in monthly oil shipments to Egypt. Today, relations between Egypt and the Gulf Cooperation Council are on hold, for the first time since the break off of diplomatic relations between the two sides in 1979 after the signing of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Diplomatic relations were resumed in 1987, and all countries concerned showed commitment and resolve to cement these strategic relations that proved instrumental in liberating Kuwait in February 1991 from Iraqi occupation. Egyptians and other Arab observers thought — or maybe it was nothing more than wishful thinking — that the visit of the Egyptian president to Abu Dhabi this month would seal Egyptian-Saudi reconciliation. After all, the presence of the Egyptian president was to coincide with the participation of the Saudi king in the inauguration of a summit in Abu Dhabi on 3 December on the protection of endangered world heritage. What transpired on that date was a surprise to many. The president of Egypt left the United Arab Emirates on the same day the Saudi monarch arrived without the two meeting one-on-one. People were disappointed, not only in Egypt but elsewhere in the Arab world. The present chill in Egyptian-Saudi relations is due to deep disagreements between the two countries on Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and on the status of Tiran and Sanafir, the two small islands claimed by the Saudis as a part of the territorial waters of Saudi Arabia. Whereas the Egyptian government has never contested Saudi sovereignty over the two islands, some political parties and figures have gone to administrative courts to refute the basis on which the Egyptian government conceded such sovereignty. As far as these reasons combined are concerned, it is not clear, at this stage, that either Egypt or Saudi Arabia are ready to give in on the basic premises that underlie their respective positions in this respect. Egypt would never send ground forces to fight the Yemenis, regardless of their political or sectarian affiliations. Moreover, Egypt would never side with the Turks and the Qataris — and for that matter, the Saudis — in funding and arming the groups fighting the Syrian army, nor cooperate with the three of them to overthrow the Syrian president. We are not willing to support materially and politically the same terrorist groups fighting the Egyptian army in Sinai. Nor are we willing to cooperate, in any way, with armed groups that hail from Al-Qaeda or the so-called “Islamic State”. As far as Iraq is concerned, our approach stems from national considerations, not sectarian ones. In other words, we support the Iraqi government in exercising its full authority and sovereignty on the entirety of Iraq. And when it comes to Iran, we admit that the Iranians are not agents of positive change in the Middle East or in Yemen, but this does not mean — and it should not mean — that we will go to war with Iran, directly or through proxies. As for the future status of Tiran and Sanafir, we will respect the various rulings of Egyptian courts while officially holding that the two islands on the southern entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba fall under Saudi sovereignty. Seemingly, the gulf between Cairo and Riyadh on the above issues are unbridgeable under present circumstances. Maybe the situation will see openings for future rapprochement after the swearing-in ceremony of president-elect Donald Trump on 20 January. It goes without saying that the new US administration will bring significant changes in American policies in the Middle East, changes that could have an impact on Saudi policies and regional alignments and in turn open new avenues of reconciliation between the Egyptians and the Saudis. Furthermore, the fate of Aleppo in Syria could be another factor in the present Egyptian-Saudi equation. A victory of the Syrian army there could drive the Saudis to reconsider their position vis-à-vis the overall situation in Syria. Granting that developments in the near and medium term pave the way for Egyptian-Saudi rapprochement, there is still a major factor that hangs in the balance and will have a long-term impact on the course of relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia; namely, the fact that Saudi Arabia is in the throes a generational transfer of power between the old guard, the generation of the 1950s to the mid-1970s, and newcomers who were born afterwards and went to American and British schools in the United States and Great Britain. Their visions are completely different from their fathers and grandfathers who went to Egyptian universities and experienced the rise of Arab nationalism and participated in all the wars that Egypt had fought against Israel. This generational transfer of power will bring with it, if not already, strains in Egyptian-Saudi relations. This transfer of power has also entailed a struggle for power within the Saudi ruling family. The present chill in Egyptian-Saudi relations could well be due to these factors. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are the only two Gulf countries that could play a significant role in putting a lid on deep political disagreements separating Cairo and Riyadh with the hope that they move relations forward in the first half of next year. The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
