Egypt's outreach to China and Iran is troubling for U.S. policy

Next week, Egypt's Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, will visit China at the invitation of President Hu Jintao. He will seek investments there that will enable Egypt to "dispense of loans and aid," according to Morsi's party vice chairman. From China, Morsi will travel to Tehran to attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit. Just two months after coming to power, Morsi is pursuing a rapprochement with Tehran and articulating a newfound ambition to jettison billions in U.S. foreign assistance dollars and financing from Western financial institutions. Taken together, these steps suggest that Morsi's Egypt may be headed for a foreign policy shift rivaling the scope of President Anwar Sadat's expulsion of the Soviets in 1972 and subsequent reorientation to the West.

Cairo's burgeoning rapprochement with Tehran is the most obvious of Morsi's foreign policy pivots. An Egyptian president hadn't visited Iran since the 1979 revolution, and the clerical regime there continues to celebrate Sadat's assassination. While the notion of a major long-standing U.S. ally self-identifying as "non-aligned" is odious, it was perhaps more tolerable for Washington during the tenure of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Given the heightened tension over Iran's nuclear program, the timing of the Morsi visit seems deliberately provocative.

More problematic for the U.S., is Egypt's outreach to China. Concerned about the effect of Egypt's new policy of intentionally downgrading ? and potentially even severing ? ties with its peace partner Israel, Morsi appears to be engaged in hedging. Much like post-revolution Iran, China could be a willing partner for an Islamist Egypt.

David Schenker is director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Christina Lin is a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

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Source: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=430432

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