While the GCC leaders, except Oman, are expected to take a historical step to enhance the internal cohesion of their joint entity, Muscat is not the only regional country that was expected to be present but was excluded. Egypt is added to the excluded list.
Contrary to recent common expectations, a meeting between Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Egypt’s President Sisi in Abu Dhabi during the first week of December did not take place. Abu Dhabi invested quite some effort to clear the skies between the two leaders, but it did not, so far, succeed.
Preliminary preparations for the two leaders, supervised by UAE leaders, showed that the gap between Riyadh and Cairo is too wide to be bridged at this moment. Sisi left the UAE one day before Salman’s arrival in a public manifestation of the disagreement between the two.
During the last few weeks, more signs of the dispute surfaced in public. Saudi Arabia abruptly ceased ARAMCO’s oil deliveries to Egypt, financed by Saudi Arabia with easy terms of payments. Riyadh withdrew its ambassador from Cairo. And harsh words were exchanged between the medias in both countries for a while before they were told by political authorities to stop.
While there are reasons for the rift, mainly regarding each country’s view of the region and its role in it, the dispute should also be understood in its relation with two other factors. The first is Syria’s crisis and the second is high expectations in Riyadh, following the significant assistance it offered to Egypt’s finances and economy during the last couple of years, that Cairo will reciprocate in other fields. Both factors played a role in exacerbating the different opinions about how things should go in the Middle East and the role of each of the two countries in it.
Certain issues triggered the dispute and returned the ties between the two countries few steps backward. What Riyadh perceives as Egypt dragging its feet in the way to hand two islands in the Aqaba Gulf in the Red Sea back to Saudi Arabia. The two countries signed a border demarcation agreement in which Cairo accepted to give the two small islands to Saudi Arabia. Cairo faced a series of court challenges to the deal amid wide spread popular objection.
Furthermore, Cairo is not enthusiastic to Riyadh’s policy on Syria. Egyptian authorities believe that any regional crisis should not lead to the rise of any Islamist political movement. Cairo looks at the Syrian crisis singularly from this angle. Conversely, Riyadh gives priority to confronting Iran’s regional expansion, hence it considers the Revolutionary Guard presence in Syria and Iran’s alliance with Assad the main source of threat for its own national security.
In other words, the two countries see their respective national security from two different angles and therefore each has a different set of priorities and threats. This is reflected on how each country shapes both its global and regional policies.
It is futile to engage in any blame game. Instead, what should be done is to manage the differences and avoid any further deterioration until the general environment in the region improves to the extent of allowing both Saudi Arabia and Egypt to get back to exploring ways to meet.
However, each of the two countries have more benefit to gain from ending their feud than from escalating it or even managing it. Changes in the world political map after the rise of anti-Iran and anti-political Islam political forces in several key countries represent an open invitation to Middle East countries to fully use the current wave to end Iran’s intervention in regional affairs.
The global political climate is favorable for fulfilling both Saudi and Egyptian national security objectives. In one hand, there is a rising policy to contain Iran and convince its leaders, one way or another, to forget about their regional hegemony aspirations. On the other, the world has no patience left to tolerate radical violent Jihadism or political Islam groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
Riyadh will hopefully find it obsolete, hopefully soon, to singlehandedly carry the burden of confronting Iran’s expansion in the region. The world finally seems ready to help. Cairo may find it obsolete to assume, with very few regional partners, the role of fighting the MB version of political Islam. The world is showing determination to confront it as well. If Iran and the terrorists are forced out of Syria, this would mean that a major complicating factor is out of the picture, hence any differences related to Syria will be over.
In other words, the grounds of the differences between Saudi Arabia and Egypt will be elevated to a level where they would be reduced due to a new global consensus which, as it looks now, seems to be directly related to the nature of Riyadh-Cairo dispute. It seems feasible to predict a synthesis of the two countries views forged as a by-product of the coming global push.
Yet, if the two countries are to enter this new phase apart from each other this will weaken their positions both. One example is what we previously discussed in relation with a new regional security structure coordinated with NATO and with major global powers. This concept, revived recently in Washington, requires three essential elements: An agreement on objective between regional powers (and entre eux) and major global powers-A world community ready to act firmly instead of the long eloquent speeches-A region ready to provide the necessary building blocks of the proposed new regional security structure.
Compared to the necessary mission of constructing a new regional order, the Saudi-Egyptian differences seem small, whatever their reasons are.
There is a need for the two countries to “freeze” their differences in order to work out the basic outlines of a regional security system. They cannot invite the world to participate in defending a divided region. If they do, they may get some help still, but such help will be fragmented and will run in dispersed channels without the joint participation of the major regional two.
What goes for Saudi Arabia and Egypt is also needed for all bilateral relations in the region. It is an understatement to say that the Arab World is facing now one of its most serious security threats in decades. This is a moment for brushing internal disputes aside for a while and putting a plan together to get the region back to a relatively stable point. While the differences between Saudi Arabia and Oman are related directly to Iran, Egypt does not have a general pro-Iran policy yet.
If this opportunity is missed and the current global momentum is gone, the regional situation will rapidly deteriorate even more.
There are certain moments when the direction of the wind is favorable. Such moments require that those on the boat work fast to spread their sails and move full thrust forward. Yet, what we see now is that Arab countries confront each other just when they are all, including Egypt, are threatened by the same external foes, Iran and terrorism, who eye them all. It is illusive to think that Iran or the Jihadists do not target all Arab countries without exception. The current state of internal disputes makes the region more vulnerable and less inviting to those who want to help.
The region needs to provide as wide as possible a platform for international security assistance. This platform will be much more effective if it is based on a collective regional division of labor, not disunity. We cannot see a situation where each of the two countries may be tempted to toy with the idea of helping those who threaten the other. Such a scenario is inconceivable due to the solid base of relations between Riyadh and Cairo. The worst may occur, as we see now, in tactical terms. But both need to make an additional effort to contain their disputes and push them aside, even unsolved, and work together to provide the world with a joint Arab initiative in the realm of regional security.
There is no need for Saudi Arabia and Egypt to immediately solve their differences or to follow identical policies. They both can simply freeze their differences wherever they are-that is to say in the areas where they exist, and move on to provide together a favorable environment for cooperation with global powers to help confronting the security threats that destabilize the whole Middle East.
Cairo and Riyadh should work quickly together, and despite their impulses, disappointments and anger at each other, in order to define what is common between them and what is not. Areas of differences should be made clear, contained, and left for the time being as we are certain they will be gradually reduced by the developments rushing daily around them. Areas of agreement should also be defined starting with a plan to build a proper regional-global mechanism to enhance regional stability, end Iranian intervention, terminate the cancer of terrorism or else it will turn into a terminal cancer for each and every country in the neighborhood.