Imprimir

It did not take much time for the Egyptian government to capitalize on Libya’s unexpected «preemptive surrender» (as columnist William Satire called it). Shortly after President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Moammar Gaclhafi’s readiness to put a stop to his country’s weapons of mass destruction program, the three top Egyptian leaders — President Hosni Mubarak, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Arab League Head Amr Moussa — publicly urged Israel to get rid of its own nuclear weapons.

Notwithstanding the official Israeli line (that it won’t be the first nation to go nuclear in the Middle East), it is widely assumed that Israel already has nuclear capability. Given its quantitative inferiority vis-a-vis the Arab world — both in population (a ratio of one to 50) and in territory (a ratio of one to 500) — Israel understood early enough that to guarantee its little country’s survival, it had to have a qualitative edge. Israel succeeded in creating one, and that troubles deeply the Egyptians, who see themselves as masters of the region.

Given Egypt’s military record, its demand seems dubious. Egypt was the first nation in the Middle East to develop and use chemical weapons (against Yemen during the 1962-67 war), and it is estimated that it currently has an arsenal of mustard gas, sarin, VX and luisite.

Since 1979, Egypt received more than $30 billion in military aid from the United States. Today, Egypt spends a quarter of its GDP on its military.

Tellingly, Egypt has reached almost operational parity with Israel’s Air Force:

• It has the same U.S.-made F-16 airplanes and roughly the same number.
• It has the same Apache helicopters and modern Abrams tanks, which are parallel to the Israeli Merkava.
• It reportedly maintains ballistic missile collaboration with North Korea and Libya, and there recently has been an intensification of cooperation with the Saudi Arabian air forces.
• During the past two decades, Egyptian scientists participated in Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program and, according to Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, in the lead-up to the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq, the Egyptian authorities refused U.S. and British requests to interview those scientists.

It is true that Israel’s military budget eats a considerable amount of its GDP, too, that it has developed sophisticated weaponry as well, and that it has received at least as much in military aid from the United States than what Egypt did. But, as Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, notes, much has been spent on war: against Palestinian terrorism, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi Scud missiles and in other fronts. Israel is still technically at war with several Arab nations.

Steinitz correctly points out that what makes Egypt’s growing military strength worrisome is the fact that –unlike Israel — Egypt faces no military challenge, much less an existential threat, from any neighbor. Sudan and Libya are no credible opponents to Egyptian might, and, conspiracy theories to the contrary, Israel has no sinister plan to take over the Nile.

So, against whom is Egypt arming? Here’s a tip: Since 1996, the «Badar exercises,» the largest war simulation of the Egyptian army, centered on «a little country northeast of Egypt.» Here’s another tip: That country is not Gaza. Recently, the United States froze the supply of advanced F-15 jets to Egypt after receiving intelligence revealing that Israel appeared as «the enemy» in all of Egypt’s war games.

Further evidence that Egypt regards Israel as an enemy emerged after Israel detected Egyptian unmanned aerial vehicles over a nuclear research facility and a missile test site. (Yes, Israel has its Ofek-5 spy satellite, which observes every inch of Egyptian territory, but, again, it does so for defensive purposes).

Then there is the issue of the tunnels along the Egyptian-Israeli border in Rafiah, Gaza. The fundamentalist movements such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad smuggle most of their arms and explosives through these tunnels that Egypt, save a couple of exemptions, has consistently failed to uncover. Similar attempts by terrorist organizations to carry ammunition to the West Bank via Jordan have mostly failed due to Jordanian predisposition to act. Some analysts see this as implicit support on the part of Egypt for the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel.

When viewing the larger picture, we can reasonably conclude that Egypt’s calls for a nuclear-free region have little to do with a genuine preoccupation with a peaceful Middle East and a lot to do with this totalitarian state’s ambitious agenda.

Julián Schvindlerman is a writer and journalist in Buenos Aires.