Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2015 | Page 31

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
with Israel (Khoury 2012). It classified Israel as an “occupying entity” and stated it
would not “allow anyone of our members to meet with an Israeli” (Khoury 2012)
These comments signify that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had no intention
of working with current policies that incorporated Israel into the new government,
which was a milestone of the U.S.–Egyptian agreements. These actions started the
move of changing interests from what they were prior to Morsi (i.e., stability in the
region, countering terrorism) to interests more in line with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Specifically, Morsi met with Hamas’ chief Khaled Meshal shortly after his election
and discussed how Egypt could bypass an Israeli blockade in order to deliver them
gas and petroleum (“Hamas Chief Meets Egypt's Morsi in Cairo, Hails ‘New Era’”
2012). These new interests directly went against the U.S. position, within the treaty,
since the United States had classified Hamas as a terrorist organization (National
Counterterrorism Center).
In addition, the regime change and presidential election of the Muslim
Brotherhood’s Morsi did not improve the U.S.–Egyptian intelligence relationship, as
the other events have shown. It created many challenges for the two countries as they
tried to move forward together. For example, according to former CIA officer Michael
Scheuer, “the help we were getting from the Egyptian intelligence service … has dried
up—either because of resentment at our governments stabbing their political leaders
in the back, or because those who worked for the services have taken off in fear of
being incarcerated or worse” (Higgins 2011). In an interview with the Guardian,
Scheuer said that “the amount of work that has devolved on U.S. and British services
is enormous, and the result is blindness in our ability to watch what’s going on among
militants.” Scheuer explained that this, during Egypt’s revolution and regime change,
was “an intelligence disaster for the United States and for Britain, and other European
services” (Higgins 2011).
After years of peace, the 2011 regime change in Egypt led to fears in Israel
about the future of the March 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. For the first time since
Mubarak, the treaty and the Egypt–Israel relationship could be seen as in jeopardy.
Morsi, however, only lasted a little over a year because he was ousted in a
military coup in July 2013. He was taken under custody by the military, and el-Sisi
(who at that time was in charge of the Egyptian Armed Forces) announced that Adly
Mansour would be the interim leader until a new Constitution could be created and
presidential election could take place (Hughesa and Hunter 2013). A few months
after the coup, an Egyptian court ordered Mubarak’s release due to the lack of legal
grounds for his detention and he later was put under house arrest.
Shortly after Morsi was arrested, el-Sisi announced his run for the presidency,
running on the platform of regional security and counter-terrorism (Abaza 2014)
On June 3, 2013 Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected president, signaling that the Muslim
Brotherhood administration under Morsi had ended and been replaced with Mubaraklike
governance. Many of the policies and interests that had been in place under
Mubarak had been changed by Morsi, but when el-Sisi won the election, he returned
them to the way they had existed during the Mubarak era. For example, during el-Sisi’s
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