A poster showing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad hangs on a wall in a damaged room inside National Hospital after explosions hit the Syrian city of Jableh, May 23, 2016. Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

Nader Hashemi is an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics and director of the Center for Middle East Studies in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. On Twitter: @naderalihashemi.

Shoot first, ask questions later. That was the decision made by Donald Trump last week when he chose to violate and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. To hear U.S. and European officials tell it, the Trump administration does not have a Plan B in place, and its attempts to construct one on the fly have been a mess. Moreover, not a single treaty ally supports Trump’s decision. At face value, this amounts to an extraordinary isolation of the United States. The reality, however, is more complicated. Precisely because these dynamics remain fluid, two key uncertainties remain in the global quest to keep the Iran deal alive: Europe’s ability to have an Iran policy independent of Washington; and the degree to which U.S.-EU policy divergence on Iran will damage transatlantic relations.

While Trump, Israel and Saudi Arabia have escalated their shared hostility toward Iran, Europe has consistently pushed for cooler heads to prevail. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the United States has no right to unilaterally terminate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a joint statement reaffirming their support for the agreement, describing it as “in our shared national security interest.” Macron went a step further, stating publicly what many European officials have told me privately: “The official line pursued by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia… is almost one that would lead us to war,” and this attempt to trigger military confrontation was “a deliberate strategy for some.” And this was all before Trump violated and withdrew from the JCPOA on May 8.

Since then, Trump has faced a barrage of verbal condemnation from America’s allies in Europe who remain verbally committed to the deal. Mogherini did not mince her words, saying “it seems that screaming, shouting, insulting, and bullying, systematically destroying and dismantling everything that is already in place, is the mood of our times…This impulse to destroy is not leading us anywhere good. It is not solving any or our problems.” Merkel said Trump’s decision “undermines trust in the international order,” and demonstrates that “it is no longer such that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take destiny in its own hands.” Macron followed suit, emphasizing that it was a “pity” and a “mistake.” Merkel, Macron, and Theresa May issued a joint statement expressing “regret and concern” and urging the U.S. “to avoid taking action which obstructs its full implementation by all other parties to the deal.”

All of this begs the question: Can Europe go it alone? The short answer is: Yes, but it’s going to be a herculean task. After 15 months of Trump’s presidency, a variety of factors—from abandoning the Paris climate accords, to hedging on America’s NATO obligations, to violating and withdrawing from the JCPOA—have demonstrated to Europe a heightened degree of unreliability emanating from Washington. As a result, Europeans will likely be forced to continuously confront a set of decisions on previously shared policy approaches, including on Iran: Try to buffer and modestly move U.S. policy, or strike out on its own. European officials have privately acknowledged to me that this is a decision they may have to make ad infinitum, leading some to call for Europe to be more assertive in setting foreign policy according to its own interests rather than those of the United States. “Germany cannot afford to wait for decisions from Washington, or to merely react to them,” former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel stated matter-of-factly this past December before leaving his post. “We must lay out our own position and make clear to our allies where the limits of our solidarity are reached.”

One does not have to look far into Europe’s past to find an Iran policy independent of the U.S. From 1992 to 1997, the EU established a “Critical Dialogue” with Iran to address a variety of issues. From 1998 to 2002, the two parties established a “Comprehensive Dialogue” to deepen cooperation and work towards signing a trade and cooperation agreement. During Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005), the European Union became Iran’s largest trading partner. In an interview with Iranian media, Federica Mogherini said: “We are the ones that used to be Iran’s first partner on the economic fields, on trade, investment, and we want to be back to that.”

The 1990s and early 2000s were a time when Europe not only had a different Iran policy, but also faced Dick Cheney-esque excoriations for doing so. “I can remember a conversation with Cheney when I was in Washington. I bumped into him at an embassy function, and he said to me, ‘the Iranians know what they have to do.’ That was America’s policy,” a former European ambassador to Iran explained to me. “In other words, surrender on all fronts. Change their policy on all fronts. That was the line then, and that is the line now, and Europe took a distinct stance then, and will continue to do so. I’m absolutely sure that [my] government will stay resolute behind an engagement policy.”

In all of my recent conversations with European officials, they felt their respective countries were pursuing their own policy, trying to maximize their leverage through the European Union, and use the EU as well as their own bilateral relationships in pursuit of objectives that differed from the U.S.—and they believe Europe should continue to do so during Trump’s presidency. To hear some European Union officials tell it, the future can be bright. “I definitely think as far as Europeans are concerned, we have our autonomous policy when it comes to Iran,” a senior EU official told me. “One of the great things that happened since the JCPOA was concluded is that the context of EU-Iran relations has been institutionalized. Iran is not seen as enemy anymore in the EU. It’s seen as sometimes adversarial. It’s definitely seen as a country with problems, but it also is seen as an opportunity.”

Moreover, the political changes that have taken place in Washington since Trump entered the White House have no parallel across the pond. Most European officials who helped negotiate and implement the JCPOA are still serving in their same professional capacities. Thus, it is beyond belief that they would be willing to kill an agreement which they: 1) Signed off on three years ago; and 2) Continue to assert is both working and in their shared interest. “Europe has a vested political and institutional interest in getting positive things done on Iran,” a senior EU official explained to me. “This is why we have such a lively traffic of officials traveling to Tehran, commissioners, working groups, task force, and Iranian officials coming to Brussels.” Indeed, the obstacles to more positive EU-Iran relations that existed a few years ago—both in Tehran and Brussels—have been significantly reduced precisely because securing and implementing the JCPOA has further incentivized breaking previous hostility.

To that end, the EU and Iran have exchanged numerous visits at the foreign minister level; President Rouhani made the first visit to Europe by an Iranian president in 16 years; and Mogherini has traveled to Iran with her colleagues on multiple occasions to solidify political and economic ties. The Europeans also established an Iran Task Force to boost cooperation, and EU-Iran trade increased by 94% in the first year of nuclear deal implementation.

“After the JCPOA,” a senior EU official told me, “the structure of incentives has changed completely. Therefore, I don’t think that Trump’s hostility will completely reverse EU policy.” Mogherini has been steadfast in this regard, repeatedly conveying this sentiment to her American interlocutors: “Europe feels a responsibility to engage with Iran [politically and economically]. I know this is not the U.S. policy, but it is the European policy and it will continue.”

Europeans, however, are not the only ones who believe the EU can and should keep the Iran deal alive regardless of Trump’s prerogatives. Many Americans share this view, emphasizing that Europe can have an Iran policy of its own. “Europe should be persuaded to keep the JCPOA with Iran, and we pay the price unfortunately,” a former senior U.S. official and ambassador to multiple countries told me. “I don’t like the price, but that price is less susceptible to producing conflict, but not susceptible at all to improving the deal.”

It has been clear from the outset of the Trump administration that America and Europe are not on the same wavelength. Trump abandoning the JCPOA is only the latest example—and it almost certainly will not be the last. Before Trump undercut Europeans on the JCPOA, the divide over Iran policy was painfully obvious. For example, on the same January 2018 day that the European Parliament hosted Alaeddin Boroujerdi—the chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee—to discuss counter-terrorism, climate change, migration and trade, Vice President Mike Pence was in Israel telling Europeans they have to “decide whether they want to go forward with the United States or whether they want to stay in this deeply flawed deal with Iran.”

After Trump announced his withdrawal from the JCPOA, my iPhone was inundated with emails and text messages from current and former European officials expressing identical disbelief and displeasure: America is thus presenting the EU with another “you’re with us or against us” ultimatum, eerily reminiscent of George W. Bush in 2001. “Europeans are not at all allies in relation to Iran,” a former senior State Department official and U.S. ambassador explained to me. “They’re not at all on the same page, and they’re basically more annoyed by us, and our obsessions and fixations, than they are sympathetic to them.”

This sentiment becomes harder to deny with each passing day. While the Trump administration attempts to kill nuclear deals, clings to trade embargoes, and obsesses over adding new Iran sanctions to its books, Europe is seeking ways to capitalize on its long-standing interest in a more robust political and economic relationship with Tehran. The Iranians are keenly aware of this, and have doubled down on their efforts to build a successful relationship with Europe. Sustained progress on this front likely means that Trump’s effort to escalate hostilities—in scenarios not clearly provoked by Iran—will cause damage to transatlantic relations.

Even before Trump abandoned the JCPOA, Europe was already taking initial steps to assert its independence from the U.S. in unprecedented ways. 25 EU governments signed a defense pact—separate from NATO—to integrate their armed forces and lower their reliance on the United States. Giving the EU a military capability that it did not previously have reflects deep disillusionment with the United States, and to hear Western diplomats tell it, the Iran element in this decision-making should not be disregarded. After Trump slapped Europe in the face by violating and pulling out the JCPOA, European officials are openly discussing efforts to go their own way on Iran policy. French finance minister Bruno Le Marie has been the most outspoken thus far, stating that Europe must introduce a variety of countermeasures to U.S. sanctions on non-American firms doing business with Iran. It is ironic that Trump is getting a degree of the European self-reliance he claimed to want—because he has made Washington out to be unreliable and unpredictable.

Rebalancing in the U.S.-EU alliance does not change the relationship overnight, but it is a sign that a different context is emerging. This creates an opening—however small—for Iran to pursue. “If I were Zarif, trying to figure out where Iran should go, the last thing on Earth I’d worry about is trying anything with Washington or Riyadh at this time,” a former senior State Department official and U.S. ambassador told me. “I’d try to flank them by working with the Europeans.”

Europe has made clear that it will go to great lengths to save the Iran deal and avoid a cycle of escalation that could lead to war. European efforts to cooperate with Trump’s team on issues outside of the deal—ranging from Iran’s regional policies to its missile program—in return for full American compliance with its JCPOA commitments failed because Trump never wanted them to succeed. Europe now must conduct a delicate degree of balancing as Tehran continues to verifiably fulfill its end of the nuclear deal: To keep the agreement alive, Iran must receive concrete guarantees that it will receive the economic benefits that it was promised—which in turn requires Europe to enact measures of economic protection for its businesses from U.S. sanctions. And therein lies the rub. There are important caveats to any independent European policy on Iran.

For starters, the predominant school of thought in the Trump administration is wildly aggressive, seeking to strong-arm Europe into adopting Trump’s hardline position due to a belief that when forced to choose, the EU will side with Washington. This presents European governments with a significant dilemma: Any continued efforts to build a common approach with the U.S. will almost certainly fail, and a re-imposition of U.S. sanctions that were lifted as part of the JCPOA is around the corner. Indeed, European business efforts in Iran have already encountered a litany of problems. European subsidiaries to American firms are only capable of doing business with Tehran when it does not involve American citizens. There is no capacity in the international system to use U.S. dollars as a method of exchange in doing business with the Iranians. Major EU banks are refusing to work with Iran for fear of steep U.S. sanctions and corresponding fines. All of these problems stand to worsen while adding an unprecedented layer of complexity to the equation.

Thus, any independent EU policy on Iran will come down in large part to how much European governments can and will do to shield their businesses and financial institutions from the extraterritorial reach of the U.S. Congress and Treasury Department. In other words, Europe will have to, through its own legislative means, take additional steps to provide an unprecedented degree of shielding—literally creating political and economic infrastructure that does not currently exist. Anything short of that likely will result in European private sector institutions either avoiding Iran like the plague, or running afoul of unilateral American sanctions and losing business ties in the U.S. as well as billions of dollars in potential fines.

A key question, then, is whether EU governments can construct the necessary incentive structure to make their companies and banks comfortable with doing business in Iran. In my conversations with European companies, they are not happy with the conflict of law situations they are being thrown into by the United States. Thus, they are more comfortable with a separate EU policy that provides remedial support from their governments to make companies feel more secure. That is the crux of the matter: Europe is more than capable of having an independent Iran policy, but if they cannot keep their companies invested, either through giving them back-stopping or by threatening to punish the United States, that is where everything falls apart.

Even before Trump abandoned the JCPOA, Europe took some initial steps to that end. European governments have actively encouraged businesses to work with Tehran, and explained that doing so is legal and legitimate with the proper due diligence. While it is up to the companies to make the final decision on whether to pursue business in Iran, some have been willing to engage and governments have taken steps to facilitate the process. Austria’s Oberbank established a credit line worth up to 1 billion Euros with Iranian banks for Austrian companies to invest in Iran. France’s state investment bank has earmarked up to 500 million Euros a year into French businesses in Iran. It also agreed to offer Euro-denominated export guarantees to Iranian buyers of French goods and services. There is reportedly a pipeline of approximately 1.5 billion Euros in potential contracts from interested French exporters. Denmark’s Danske Bank established a 500 million Euro line of credit for deals involving some of Iran’s largest banks. And Denmark’s export credit rating agency guaranteed 100 percent of the financing of export deals—including against U.S. sanctions. The fact that medium-sized companies are pursuing business despite geopolitical instability and risk speaks to Europe’s clear interest in the Iranian market regardless of American preferences. Thus, there is a limit to how much damage Trump can do to European-Iranian relations without also doing serious damage to U.S.-European relations.

This is particularly true as the Trump administration prepares to unilaterally re-impose sanctions that were removed as part of the JCPOA, thereby trying to force Europe to choose: Cower to Trump or engage in a degree of brinkmanship with the United States. In the 1990s, Europe passed blocking legislation on U.S. secondary sanctions that were aimed at punishing companies that made energy investments in Iran. Rather than obey American diktats, European governments told their companies that they should not comply with U.S. sanctions, and the EU would protect them accordingly. Europe also told the Clinton administration that if it pulled the trigger on such sanctions, they would take America to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and engage in retaliatory sanctions. With the EU saying that it intends to press ahead in terms of making investments and engaging in trade with the Iranians, it is also clearly stating that it views the re-imposition of U.S. secondary sanctions as a capriciously hostile move—hence the aforementioned threats of its own regarding counter-measures.

Looking ahead, the key question is whether the Trump administration is willing to start a full-fledged trade war with Europe. And let’s be clear: It would be economically suicidal to do so. However, Trump does fancy himself an economic nationalist, so it is difficult to know for sure whether he might take the bait being served up by John Bolton and other ideologues on his national security team. If you assume a rational actor model, then America will blink. But with Trump, we may not be dealing with a rational actor. The degree to which Trump is actually prepared to punish a litany of European companies remains unknown. On the one hand, a self-described dealmaker who delivered a $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut for American businesses would seem among the least likely to damage U.S. business interests in Europe. On the other hand, this would not be the first instance in which Trump’s “America First” stance damaged both U.S. and EU interests.

U.S.-EU divergence on Iran policy is already clear, but the depth and scope of damage caused by this divergence going forward will depend entirely on Washington’s actions. In other words, it has become a sliding scale: The more hostile that Trump’s actions become, the more damage that will ensue—and the more likely Europe is to retaliate. The path ahead looks increasingly treacherous. Historically, since 1945, there have been significant occasions where Europe and the United States have diverged. The Vietnam War and 2003 Iraq War are prime examples. Politically, transatlantic relations suffered for a few years, and French fries were temporarily renamed “Freedom fries” in a rebuke to France, but no lasting damage was done and considerable overlap on policy matters remained.

This time, however, may be different. With Trump following through on his threat to leave the JCPOA and re-impose secondary sanctions, he is now trying to bully Europe into ignoring a UN Security Council resolution enshrining the nuclear deal—and instead surrendering to his bad faith desecration of international law. It is hard to see how such U.S.-EU policy divergence would avoid deeply damaging transatlantic ties. The concept of a rules-based world and effective multilateralism defines the foreign policy identity of the European Union. Trump’s deviation from that makes Europe less likely to count on the United States as much as it has in the past. As these things continue to happen, the transatlantic link is going to weaken. If Washington does not recognize that and take immediate steps to accommodate it, the United States is going to be in trouble.

As Europe seeks to diversify its geopolitical and economic relationships, the JCPOA provides unique opportunities to forge closer ties to Iran that can help prevent both military confrontation and the nuclear deal’s demise. The question is not whether the EU should pursue these objectives, but rather the best way to do so. Thus, Europeans should consider the following:

1) Open a EU Office in Tehran

To the credit of European diplomats, efforts to do so have commenced under the leadership of foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, as well as with public support from the European Parliament—but have not yet yielded concrete results. While the EU has demonstrated its political will to achieve this objective, the best it has been able to do thus far is send diplomats to Tehran for weeks at a time every month. To that end, the merits of establishing a EU office are relatively straightforward. The symbolism is a clear sign of Europe’s commitment to deepening bilateral relations, and having people on the ground provides irreplaceable insight into what is going on inside Iran.

As the U.S. government’s 39-year absence of an embassy in Tehran repeatedly demonstrates, the quality of information gathering and country assessments cannot be replicated through intelligence or open-source information. Analyzing local developments requires a deep understanding and appreciation of the issues, culture, and pulse of Iran’s government and people. The personal contacts and interactions that a EU office will facilitate provide a more accurate assessment of local opportunities, risks and developments—all of which gives Europe a huge competitive advantage vis-à-vis Washington.

To hear senior Iranian officials tell it, the key obstacle to opening an EU office are hardliners who believe it will be used as an outpost to pressure Iran on human rights issues in ways that Europe does not when it comes to Saudi Arabia and other chronic human rights abusers in the region. This is not an insurmountable obstacle. Empowering like-minded Iranian counterparts to win this domestic debate can likely be achieved by applying standard human rights metrics and enforcement to all countries, and putting this in writing as official EU policy. Doing so will demonstrate to Iran that it is not treated any differently than Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the UAE.

2) Appoint a EU Senior Advisor for U.S.-Iran Conflict Prevention

The EU is already well positioned to assess Iran-related matters from a position of strength vis-à-vis a U.S. government that has no eyes and ears on the ground. Opening a EU office in Tehran will solidify its comparative advantage. In order to institutionalize and capitalize on this momentum, Europe should appoint a Senior Advisor for U.S.-Iran Conflict Prevention that reports to Mogherini—preferably selected from a country with a reputation for peace building, such as Sweden. Based out of the EU’s Tehran office, the Senior Advisor should regularly travel to Washington for consultations, and publish quarterly reports that document provocative actions taken by both sides and the necessary steps to reduce tensions.

By creating a senior European official whose mandate is preventing U.S.-Iran conflict, Europe will send a powerful message to both capitals. The former will see an EU that seeks to create stronger ties to Iran by playing the role of balancer rather than taking sides—thereby creating goodwill and loyalty amongst Iran’s government and people. The latter will see an EU that refuses to be strong-armed into adopting hostile U.S. policies that contradict European political, economic, and security interests—thereby signaling to Washington that it risks going it alone if diplomacy continues to be abandoned and a march to war commences.

3) Establish a EU-Iran Strategic Partnership

With a Tehran office and conflict prevention envoy locked in, Europe will have the building blocks in place to fast-track negotiations with Iran on a strategic partnership, using similar agreements with India, Brazil, China, and seven other nations as a model. Negotiations over a comprehensive political, trade, and security agreement will confirm the EU’s willingness to deepen and create a stronger framework for cooperation with Iran. Formalizing its acknowledgement of Tehran’s role as a regional power pivotal for resolving security challenges will help safeguard core EU interests and objectives.

While Europe’s strategic partnerships are underpinned by different political and legal frameworks, the metric applied to Iran should be as similar as possible to those already on the books. Creating such harmonization will demonstrate to Iran that its goodwill will be reciprocated, which in turn rewards Europe’s devotion of negotiating resources and energy by giving it a greater global sway as Washington’s interests vis-à-vis Tehran diverge. The economic aspect of a strategic partnership with Iran will boost EU competitiveness in a globalized economy as well as spread its established norms and standards. The political and security aspects will enhance cooperation on a number of key issues, including but not limited to: counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, non-proliferation, maritime security, climate change, development, and avoiding war—all of which empowers Europe as a global security guarantor at a time when Trump’s America retrenches.  

4) Update and Reinstate Blocking Regulations

As Congress continues to consider new sanctions targeting Iran that violate America’s JCPOA obligations, the EU should take immediate steps to amend Council Regulation (EC) No. 2271/96 to add those U.S. sanctions whose application was ended pursuant to the nuclear deal. This regulation was instituted following Congress’s passage of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which imposed sanctions on foreign parties investing in Iran’s energy sector and inaugurated European frustration with U.S. attempts to impose sanctions on an extraterritorial basis.

Formal amendment of Council Regulation (EC) No. 2271-96 would have the express purpose of guarding against efforts of the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Iran inconsistent with America’s JCPOA obligations. Because such U.S. sanctions would have extraterritorial application and would run interference on EU attempts to develop and strengthen commercial relations with Iran, this amendment would be for the express purpose of: A) Insulating the JCPOA from U.S. attempts to torpedo on the agreement; and B) Protecting European interests in developing a multi-faceted relationship with Iran.  The institution of new U.S. sanctions provides a ready basis for the EU to assert its prerogatives vis-à-vis the JCPOA.

5) Help Facilitate Iran’s FATF Compliance

The European Union should encourage member states to provide the technical expertise required for Iran to amend its anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime to ensure it has the opportunity to come into full compliance with the global standards promulgated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). So long as Iran remains on FATF’s “blacklist,” the willingness of first-tier EU financial institutions to engage their Iranian counterparts will be exceptionally limited, thereby continuing to frustrate European efforts to develop and strengthen normal, sustained commercial relations between the EU and Iran.

Such measures should include EU-wide encouragement of private parties to lend their technical expertise over AML/CFT compliance matters to Iranian banks seeking to put into practice amended Iranian laws and FATF recommendations. To the extent necessary to ensure the provision of such technical expertise, the EU should encourage the United States to provide legal authorization for American citizens to engage in the provision of such technical expertise, particularly insofar as the willingness of European firms to engage Iranian parties in these matters may be dependent on limiting the costs of U.S. sanctions compliance.

6) Instruct European Central Banks to Process Iran-related Payments

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to full implementation of the JCPOA is the ability of Iran to attract foreign investment by way of access to capital. In a world of global banking infrastructure interconnectivity, access to financing for major industrial projects requires prime banks to provide capital at competitive interest rates. Iran is currently viewed by many as having too much “political risk” associated with investment, but this is not often the reason why European banks decide to turn down Iranian business. They do so under the pretense that major European financial institutions are so intertwined with American financial system, be it as counterparty to transactions with American banks or holdings of U.S. dollar reserves. This exposure and the legal compliance that accompanies it has limited the appetite for prime European banks to jump into the Iranian market, despite Iranians longing to embrace European companies for their technological expertise and global reach.

For Europe to regain its footing in Iran, the European Central Bank (ECB) must look to support small to midsize banks under its regulatory authority that have no (or very little exposure) to the U.S. financial system. The ECB along with the CBI (Iranian Central Bank) should designate a few Iranian and European banks as certified to carry out trade and investment for EU companies in Iran. These banks can then have as their counterparty Iranian banks that meet EU regulatory and standards for best practices (as well FATF) and have the backing of the CBI in Tehran. This “safe banking zone” can expand over time as both Brussels and Tehran become comfortable and see that it is working to their satisfaction. The EU needs to expand from banks that only operate as clearinghouses for Iran related transactions and also encourage these banks to underwrite trade and investment with Iranian counterparties. If these banks feel comfortable in the backing they receive from Brussels and the correct financial incentives are in place, it would be a victory for the EU’s commercial aspirations in Iran, help Iran derive the economic benefits promised in the JCPOA, and aid Europe’s efforts to mitigate continued U.S.-Iran conflict escalation.

7) Establish a Joint EU-Iran Bank

Perhaps the boldest step Europe and Iran should take is to create a EU-Iran bank with no ties to the U.S. banking system. Such a bank could be a 50-50 joint venture with multiple Iranian institutions that meet stringent compliance requirements (shareholders are Iranian nationals or companies that are not on UN, U.S. or EU sanctions lists) along with European stakeholders who wish to participate. The bank would be capitalized with Euros, receiving license to operate both in the EU and Iran by the respective central banks of each. Its board would maintain a rotating chairmanship between the two sides every two to three years, which would cast deciding votes on issues. However, the better route for the EU to take is to have a majority stake in the bank to always maintain the chairmanship so as to insist on the highest level of compliance and make sure it directionally can control the bank and safeguard it from allegations that it is being run by nefarious Iranian interest—as is so often the case from U.S. institutions against Iranian banks.

The purpose of such a bank would be like the banking channel: to make sure EU companies have a mechanism where they can invest in Iran, access financing, and repatriate proceeds of income they generate from Iranian business back to Europe. Iran could also start processing transactions and accessing trade finance more easily than is the case today. All letters of credit issued by Iranian counterparties would be in Euros or Swiss Francs. The European shareholders would be smaller financial institutions with little or no exposure to the U.S. banking system.

8) Right-size Expectations on Ballistic Missiles

The EU should submit a request to Tehran for dialogue without preconditions on Iran’s ballistic missile program as a component within the aforementioned Strategic Partnership. Europeans honed in on this issue while trying to prevent Trump from abandoning the JCPOA, but they should proceed carefully and avoid cutting off their nose to spite their face. An Iran that fully implements its JCPOA commitments is clearly not working to deploy ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear weapons—because it has rejected the motive of deploying such weapons. Moreover, Iran has unilaterally announced the limitation of its ballistic missile range to 2,000 kilometers. While this gives Tehran regional reach, Saudi Arabia’s missiles have a range of approximately 4,000 kilometers, and Israel’s missiles are equipped with nuclear weapons.

Therefore, Western arms exports to Riyadh, Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi should be re-evaluated because the context for security and conflict in the region has clearly changed since Trump entered office. For example, missile sales to Saudi Arabia are typically seen as a normal aspect of partner reassurance. In the current climate, however, it is far more destabilizing and escalatory. Arming these countries to the teeth makes the EU’s ballistic missile efforts vis-à-vis Tehran less likely to succeed—particularly when each of their defense budgets dwarfs Iran’s. The Iranians now view such sales as the EU undermining their security, given the increased threats they face from Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE. A wiser course of action for Europe would be to follow Germany’s lead and halt weapons exports to Saudi Arabia until their hostile regional policies cease.

Can Europe save the Iran deal? Yes. Will doing so require a demonstration of political and economic independence from United States not seen this the end of World War II? Yes. Facing this daunting reality, skepticism is understandable and dissent within the EU is likely. Few would envy the dilemma facing Europe. However, the decisions it makes today will cement the realities of tomorrow. Europeans must learn the right lesson from their failed negotiations with Trump’s team over the past year: Trump is a bully, and if you give him an inch, he will take a mile. Europe can push back in pursuit and protection of global interests, or it can continue to get pushed around to its detriment. Europeans did not ask to be put in this position by Trump, but here we are. In the days and weeks ahead, as Europeans deliberate over whether or not to take a stand, they should keep one question in the front of their minds at all times: If not now, when?

Reza Marashi is research director at the National Iranian-American Council. He previously served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Atlantic, and National Interest. On Twitter: @rezamarashi.

When the Egyptian uprising broke out in 2011, Bahia Shehab, associate professor of design at the American University in Cairo, had just finished working on a book and art installation. No, A Thousand Times No collected a thousand variations of the word “no” on items of Islamic history dating back more than a thousand years in locations as far-flung as Spain and China. Nine months later, she found herself spray-painting the different letterings on the streets and walls of Cairo. “No to beating women,” “No to a new Pharaoh,” “No to burning books.” Her work has not only earned her many honors, including a place on the BBC’s “Women 100” list in 2013 and 2014, but also led to her becoming the first Arab woman to ever win the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture.

Shehab, 40, is a recognized Egyptian-Lebanese artist, designer, and art historian whose art has been displayed in street graffiti, exhibitions, and galleries all over the world. Shehab’s work focuses on issues of identity and injustice, particularly in relation to socioeconomic, political, and gender discrimination. “Everything is a manifestation of that singular idea of human rights. I am concerned with women’s rights because they are part of human rights,” she said in an interview with the Cairo Review.

Shehab believes her award-winning art installation resonated so deeply because of its relevance to humanity. “When you feel all the oppression and bad things that are going on around you, you feel like you just want to say no.” The title of the work highlights a common Arab expression: “No, a thousand times no.”

Shehab is best known as a “calligraffiti” artist, who blends Arabic calligraphy and typography with graffiti. As a scholar of the Arabic script, she believes it opens a window into learning about Arab identity. In her research on the Lam-Alif (the two Arabic letters that make up the word “no”), she thought: “Imagine all the culture that produced this one letter. If you can create a thousand shapes for one letter, imagine the kind of knowledge that this civilization had.” Very often, her passion to document art history has brought her to the streets. While she can no longer do street art in Cairo because of the city’s “inaccessibility,” she has been painting graffitied quotes from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish on walls in cities from China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, and Italy to Japan, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

Shehab is also the founder of a groundbreaking graphic design program at AUC featuring a curriculum centered on the visual culture and heritage of the Arab World. She believes that this approach will help students design the solutions of the future. She also developed a graphic design online course in Arabic for the Queen Rania Foundation’s Edraak Platform, which 50,000 students registered for. She is working on another to be released later this year.

Speaking about her UNESCO-Sharjah Prize, Shehab tells the Cairo Review, “It’s a shame that I am the first Arab woman.” She adds that more important than fame and recognition is that laws change in favor of women and that women’s movements earn more rights. Shehab intends to use the spotlight to continue to showcase issues of gender inequality and human rights violations. She underscores the commonality all women face in experiencing oppression but stresses that progress still needs to be made in the Middle East. “We [Arab women] face double the challenge but women’s movements in the West have been working for almost a hundred years and just now they are reaping their rewards. So, we still have a long way to go.”

Most recently, Shehab worked on a video-photo project to raise awareness on the need for greater government attention to preventing blindness in Africa. The project showcases the individual members of an all-women blind orchestra troupe in Egypt. She chose to feature the women playing their instruments alone in a hallway before and after a concert in order for the viewer to “relate to the loneliness of being a woman, veiled, and blind in Cairo. It is a poetic reflection of who they are.”

Shehab is currently co-authoring a book on the history of Arab graphic design. She leaves little doubt that she is prepared to continue her quest for greater representation of Arab women in art and design circles. In every way, she models the advice she gives to rising female artists: “Work hard, love what you do, and you can get anything you want.”

Doria Shafik, Egypt’s best-known feminist and suffragette, started the women’s journal Bint Al-Nil at a low point in her life. She wanted to counter the public’s image of her as being “too French.” As editor-in-chief of La Femme Nouvelle, a Francophone culture magazine, Shafik was often associated with its publisher Princess Chevikar, the vengeful and publicly hated divorcee of King Fouad of Egypt. This association caused Shafik to be excluded from the Egyptian Feminist Union and regarded as one of Chevikar’s opulent “ladies of the salon de thé”—a tea-sipping detached elite, removed from the suffering of common Egyptians. Moreover, Shafik was bored with her job as a French-language inspector in the Education Ministry, and was frustrated with the limited progress made on women’s rights in her country. Her burning desire was to enter public life. To her, journalism was the gateway into that world.

The glossy Arabic-language Bint Al-Nil journal appeared on newsstands in November 1, 1945. It sold out within the first two hours, and did not stop circulating until 1957, when the government forced its closure. With a name derived from Shafik’s own self-identification as the “daughter of the Nile,” the purpose of the journal was to awaken Egyptian and Arab women to the women’s rights movement.

Looking through the select articles of the journal made available by the American University in Cairo, one encounters an archetypical lifestyle magazine, featuring motherhood tips, philanthropic news and profiles of celebrated women in history, but the occasional dip into activism is hard to miss. Shafik used Bint Al-Nil as a platform to broadcast her radical feminist voice and promote better conditions for women.

The magazine successfully turned heads at a time when the women’s movement was buried in the heightened nationalism that marked the run-up to the Gamal Abdel Nasser-led revolt against the British and the ruling monarchy in 1952.  Close reading reveals the evolution of Shafik’s own intellectual thought and entrance into public life, which led her to some of the most profound feminist undertakings in her lifetime and in the Egyptian suffrage movement.

The journal also raises questions about the difficulties of generating a feminist discourse within a culturally impenetrable and patriarchal society in a country that gave women the right to vote only in 1956. As the editor, publisher, and owner of Bint Al-Nil, Shafik faced such challenges head-on. The first such challenge came from within the publication. In the first two years of Bint Al-Nil, Shafik’s editorial partner, Ibrahim Abdu, toned down her language in her editorials after they had been translated from French in order to avoid the “Al-Azharites’ immediate wrath and violent opposition to Bint Al-Nil.” At the time, Abdu claimed that Al-Azhar—Egypt’s top religious body—was strongly against women entering the same workforce as men. Aware of the mounting opposition to her project, Shafik fought hard to maintain editorial and financial independence.

By 1949, four years after the journal’s launch, Shafik was fighting criticism from the public and the press that she was inciting women to ignore their domestic responsibilities and engage in politics. Three times during the span of a year, she churned out editorials defending her publication’s mission and identity, arguing that it was neither a political organization nor did it aim to embolden women against religion. In the May issue of 1949, Shafik maintained that the magazine only hoped to encourage women to fight for their political rights. That women’s lack of political emancipation was at the core of their oppression pervaded Shafik’s feminist thinking.

In another editorial, she scoffed: “What will our men in Paris say when they are asked about the status of women in political life? Do they say they are at its bottom? […] Or do they say that they are at its zenith but are not equal to an illiterate carpenter or shoemaker who can fingerprint the ballot.” She signs off the piece with a call to parliament to grant women suffrage.

Understandably, Shafik was locked in a fight with the public, whose antagonism toward her was deepening. As she intensified her efforts to bring women political and social rights such as curbing one-sided divorce and polygamy, her foes multiplied. In 1948, when she created a union named after the journal, she came under attack from the clergy, conservatives, and progressives alike, and even the older generation of feminists, who were students of famed feminist Huda Al-Shaarawi.  Although Shafik’s feminism reconciled Islam with equality and modernity and aimed to reconceive public life for women through political participation, her beliefs were hardly tolerated.

Against this backdrop, Shafik’s political consciousness radically shifted from a bourgeois understanding of women’s rights to a more class-conscious, and later militant, kind of feminism. By the early fifties, Shafik began to enter the political fight, Marxist lawyer Loutfi Al-Kholi, who was involved in the work of the magazine, noted. “She transformed Bint Al-Nil into a movement that related the liberation of women to the larger political struggle,” he is quoted in Cynthia Nelson’s biography of Shafik as saying.

In February 1950, an intensity emerged in Shafik’s writing. In an editorial addressed to the Egyptian prime minister, she writes with incisive irony: “Why are we doubting the prime minister’s words? Didn’t His Excellency, Mustafa Al-Nahas, announce last summer that the Wafd [Party’s] primary goal was to grant Egyptian women the right to vote?” It was time to change tactics, she added—“to assail men, surprise them right in the middle of injustice, that is to say, under the cupola of parliament.” Her bold words hinted at a major protest that she was planning.

In the afternoon of February 19, 1951, Shafik, along with 1,500 women, stormed parliament. They held a four-hour demonstration before being received in a parliamentary office and extracting a promise from the president of the senate to take up their demands for suffrage, amendments to the personal status law, and equal pay with men. Although a draft bill was in the pipeline, the prime minister blocked shepherding it through parliament.

Shafik stood trial for staging the sit-in, and her case was postponed indefinitely. Then, after a group of army officers calling themselves the “Free Officers” took over the country in July 23, 1952, things slightly looked up: Shafik praised the new rulers and wrote that they would herald “the beginning of a renaissance” for women. But the officers’ authoritarian bent soon became apparent, and in response to the lack of female representation on the constitution-writing committee, Shafik held a hunger strike.

Lasting for ten days, the strike turned Shafik into an international figure and earned Egyptian women a written promise by the government for full political rights. However, the 1956 constitution granted women only vaguely-worded political rights on the condition of literacy. Unassuaged, Shafik headed an all-out confrontation against Nasser, protesting in the Indian embassy and holding a “hunger unto death” strike against what she viewed as his dictatorial rule. Nasser himself ordered Shafik’s house arrest and banned her publication. Shafik withdrew into an eighteen-year period of seclusion before allegedly throwing herself off the balcony of her apartment.

Shafik’s solitary demise was shocking for a woman who had pioneered feminist consciousness-raising and championed women’s suffrage and advancement for many years. Her publication and organizing are key to Egyptian women’s emancipation even today. Finding solace in poetry during her final days, Shafik reflects on her broken legacy and the lone march ahead: “My name begins with a D/and I am a woman…Daughter of the Nile/I have demanded women’s rights/My fight was enlarged to human freedom/And what was the result?/I have no more friends/So what?/Until the end of the road/I will proceed alone.” But it is only after her death that Egypt began to mourn the loss of Shafik and understand the sacrifices she has made for feminism.

The Saudi-born Lubna S. Olayan, CEO and deputy chairman of Olayan Financing Company, delivered some hard truths about the Arab World. Eighty-five million people in the region are illiterate. Poverty affects almost a quarter of an Arab population of 150 million, and 50 percent of the world’s refugees are Arab. And yet, young people can be agents of change, argues Olayan, delivering AUC’s Nadia Younes Memorial Lecture, established in honor of the Egyptian UN official killed in the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. “How can we be surprised by the wakeup call young people are giving us?” she rhetorically asks, referring to the 2010–11 Arab uprisings, adding that “our young people are looking for the opportunity to contribute.” Education reform is the vital first step. As a child, Olayan remembers her father moving her and her sisters from Saudi Arabia to Beirut because there weren’t any schools available for girls in Saudi Arabia. Today, Olayan is paying back this opportunity by chairing Alfanar, the first venture philanthropy organization in the Middle East. Arab governments, she says, should match individual and company donations to encourage philanthropy. “What better way to start than by focusing on social impact?”

The recent statement by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman that his country would acquire nuclear weapons if Iran had them has understandably raised serious concern, albeit for the wrong reasons. The statement raised red flags because the crown prince openly said that Saudi Arabia would enhance its military capacity to counterbalance those of its neighbors, particularly Iran.

The Middle East is in a state of turmoil from North Africa through the Levant and southwards to the Arabian Gulf. A natural consequence of ongoing conflicts is militarization, be that at the level of conventional armaments or weapons of mass destruction. Arms expenditures—whether by acquisition from abroad, or as part of domestic industrial production—are at an historic high.

The Saudi crown prince was actually only projecting policies that neighbors, as well as the major powers globally, have pursued since the beginning of the Cold War. In fact, both Israel and Iran have greatly enhanced their domestic military industrial capacity, including nuclear technology. Israel is reported to have over 200 nuclear warheads, and has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Both countries have acquired sophisticated delivery systems.

Despite Iran being a full member of the NPT, concerns emerged over whether its civilian nuclear program could serve as a cover for the development of a military nuclear capability.  The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1 was meant to address these concerns, but seems to have fallen short because of worries over the relatively short “breakout time” for Iran to achieve a military nuclear capability once the restrictions imposed by the agreement expire. There are also concerns regarding Iran’s ballistic missile capacity, which is not part of the agreement. And of course, Iran’s aggressive policies and hegemonic regional ambitions only add to the prevailing concerns over its nuclear program.

The real concern should be that the Saudi crown prince’s statement could be read as a warning that a nuclearized Middle East is no longer a distant prospect. If left unchecked, these developments will severely destabilize an already turbulent regional security situation. Ignoring the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is simply no longer tenable.

Time is of the essence. Middle Eastern states will seek to augment their military capabilities, and enhance their domestic military capacities if these concerns are not met. This will include amassing more weapons, at a higher level of sophistication. Acquiring more weapons capacity in the nuclear domain will be one of the options.

A preferable alternative would be to forthrightly address the emerging nuclear threats in the region by rectifying the asymmetries in nonproliferation commitments, and encouraging regional adherence to the various treaty frameworks that make up the global nonproliferation regime with regards to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as their means of delivery.

Rather than abrogating the P5 + 1 nuclear deal with Iran, a better approach would be to augment it with a comprehensive region-wide approach to the proliferation challenge in the Middle East. Egypt has long called for the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. All states in the region—including both Israel and Iran have—expressed support for the establishment of such a zone.  Egypt itself has already made its adherence to international agreements that prohibit chemical and biological weapons contingent upon Israel joining the NPT.

The concerns about breakout time in JCPOA enters into play after approximately fifteen years. In moving forward, the best option would be to create a negotiating, working group from Middle Eastern states, under the auspices of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the participation of the International Atomic Energy Organization, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization as the relevant technical bodies of the major nonproliferation treaty regimes. This format would accommodate Israel’s and the United States’s preference for regional negotiations.

At the same time, through the participation of the P5, there is a wider international cover that addresses Iranian and Arab concerns.

The task of the working group would be to negotiate an agreement to create a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (MEWMDFZ) and have it enter into force before the provisions enshrined in the JCPOA expire. Arrangements would also be made to expand the scope of the original proposal to include measures to contain the means of delivery of these weapons.

As a preliminary indication of seriousness, the negotiating parties would be asked to deposit letters with the UN Security Council committing themselves to this objective and to abstain from further developing their weapons of mass destruction capacities while negotiations are ongoing.

Such a zone can be achieved under a single wide-ranging regional framework that addresses all weapons of mass destruction in the region, as well as complementary regional verification arrangements to ensure compliance. It can, however, also be also be achieved initially through universal adherence to existing international agreements prohibiting these weapons coupled with, if necessary, additional verification measures. The optimum approach would be a hybrid of both.

Each of the three international technical agencies should be invited to suggest confidence-building measures in their areas of expertise to create a better environment for negotiations. They can also be called upon to assist in developing verification measures commensurate with such agreements. And, the P5 could constructively suggest a series of other measures regarding good neighborly relations to decrease bilateral tensions in the region.

The international community, with the Middle East at its core, can either engage in bold, although difficult negotiations, or face the inevitable dangerous ramifications of further weaponization and nuclearization of the Middle East.

Nabil Fahmy, a former foreign minister of Egypt, is the dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo. He served as Egypt’s ambassador to the United States from 1999–2008, and as envoy to Japan between 1997 and 1999. On Twitter: @DeanNabilFahmy.

Physician by profession and radical feminist by vocation, Nawal El Saadawi, 86, has been dubbed the “Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World.” El Saadawi is most known for her fierce advocacy against the issues of female genital mutilation, Islam, and the veil. Her controversial views have led to her imprisonment, the issuing of death threats against her, and ultimately, her having to flee Egypt with her family. El Saadawi returned to her homeland and took part in the 2011 uprising, championing women’s rights through calls for constitutional amendments and for the establishment of a union for Egyptian women. El Saadawi’s most recent public efforts include her plans to launch an institute that promotes thought and creativity. The Cairo Review conducted this interview with El Saadawi on April 8, 2018.

CAIRO REVIEW: What got you into writing literature? How did working in the medical profession influence that, if at all?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: I started writing when I was a child in primary school. I kept a memoir—a diary—in which I wrote letters to God, to my parents, to my teachers, and to King Farouk, but all these letters were kept secret or burned.

And I never wanted to be a medical doctor but I became a doctor just to please my parents. However, studying medical sciences and examining sick men and women gave me a lot of material for my fiction and nonfiction.

CAIRO REVIEW: Why was female genital mutilation the most recurring and sensational topic in your early writing?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: Female genital mutilation and male genital mutilation are very serious problems. To cut healthy children is a grave crime, but medical doctors, nurses, and midwives were ignorant, locally and globally, and religious men and women of all religions supported these crimes.

The global commercial media made it sensational but I challenged all that by writing scientifically and truthfully in my fiction. However, female genital mutilation is only one of the topics I write about, and I wrote about many more, which were ignored by literary critics and the global media.

CAIRO REVIEW: Do you still feel it is an important issue today?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: In Egypt today, 90 percent of females and 100 percent of males are cut. The law forbids female genital mutilation but not male genital mutilation. Even the United Nations did not prevent male genital mutilation. All these operations have serious complications, physically and socially, and are crimes against children who cannot fight back.

CAIRO REVIEW: What is your opinion about the state of feminism in Egypt today?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: We have fragmented women’s organizations called NGOs; they are semi-governmental organizations. They receive a lot of money globally, but their effect is very little. The governmental women’s organizations are obedient to the government and cannot struggle against class, and patriarchal and religious powers.

CAIRO REVIEW: Immediately following the 2011 uprising, there was the idea of establishing an Egyptian union for women. Do you still think this is necessary?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: The Egyptian Women Union was aborted (like the January 2011 revolution) by the Muslim Brotherhood and the government at that time. Women in Egypt need a women’s political party not only an organization, to be liberated from the political, religious, colonial, and capitalist powers.

CAIRO REVIEW: Many of your novels such as Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, Woman at Point Zero, and Love in the Kingdom of Oil deal with imprisonment, literal or figurative. What does it take for your heroines to escape their imprisonment?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: All creative works help to open the minds and illuminate oppressed women and men, as well as, assist in raising their consciousness, and therefore they organize and struggle together to liberate themselves from all types of prisons. Most of my heroines are fighters in different ways.

CAIRO REVIEW: How can Memoirs from the Women’s Prison be relevant today, especially with so many political prisoners languishing in jails?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: I think prisons are a global-local (glocal) problem, not only in our country. Democracy is false in the classist, patriarchal, and racist system that it exists in. Anybody can go to prison if he or she challenges the status quo in any country, and so I cannot compare between prisons today because they are all forms of postmodern slavery.

CAIRO REVIEW: There is emerging literature mapping a new geography of sexual politics in the Middle East. Does resistance have to be transgressive as your novels show?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: Resistance can take different forms in different situations, but women cannot be liberated by covering or uncovering their bodies. Veiling and nakedness are two faces of the same coin, encouraged by capitalist imperialism and religious patriarchal fanaticism. My principle is to unveil the mind.

CAIRO REVIEW: To what extent are your works autobiographical?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: Yes, the writer is inside his or her novel. I do not separate the self from the other. In all my novels, there are parts autobiographical, parts fiction, and parts reality. There is no separation between fact and fiction.

CAIRO REVIEW: Your last play God Resigns in the Summit Meeting, which explores religious paradoxes and the final resignation of God from his role, led to a publisher recall and accusations of heresy and insulting Islam. Why did you feel the need to write this work? Do you accept criticism of the play?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: I accept any criticism of my work, if it is objective and based on critical thought, but I refuse threats or insults of fanatic religious political people.

I wrote this play because the characters and ideas in it have haunted me all my life, since childhood, since I wrote my first letter to God in primary school. The urge to write a novel or a play is not voluntary, and has many reasons and no reason at all.

CAIRO REVIEW: Can you share your experience of exile both in Egypt and in the United States?
NAWAL EL SAADAWI: Exile can be very useful if we continue to work and produce creatively. Exile in Egypt or outside Egypt was very useful to me, but exile in the United States or Europe or other places was more productive and inspiring to me than in Egypt. The threats against my life were greater at home than far away. In fact, I learned a lot from living in different places with different people and different cultures.

Since 2008 Rothna Begum has been advocating for women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa region, first with Amnesty International then with Human Rights Watch (HRW). Having studied Islamic as well as human rights and international law, her interest in the topic drew her to work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries where sharia is either the law or the source of the law. Given the huge population of female domestic workers coming from Asian countries to the Gulf and their vulnerability to different types of abuse, this soon became Begum’s main area of focus. On April 16, Begum spoke to the Cairo Review about the state of migrant domestic workers in the region and efforts to protect their rights.

CAIRO REVIEW: Have you seen progress since you first came into this field ten years ago?
ROTHNA BEGUM: When I started there was a serious deficit in protection for workers. Migrant domestic workers face the triple forms of discrimination: one, they are women; two, they are migrants; three, they are specifically domestic workers. In the Gulf countries, domestic workers were long excluded from labor laws. As women, they’re more vulnerable to sexual abuse, and also trapped in the homes as domestic workers so they are really liable to both physical and very intimate forms of abuse unlike other migrant workers. And, of course, specific racial discrimination comes into that.

In the Gulf, we have seen a series of reforms recognizing the rights of domestic workers, starting with Jordan in 2008, Bahrain in 2012, Saudi Arabia in 2013, Kuwait, which had the most progressive law in the Gulf region in 2015, and Qatar and the UAE in 2017. The last Gulf Cooperation Council country is Oman, which has a 2004 regulation of domestic workers but has no penalties so it’s not effectively any form of labor law.

But the other big problem is the kafala system. The idea that your entire legal status is based on your employer’s permission gives a huge amount of control to the employers to become as abusive or exploitative as they like. However, HRW has helped play a part in developing the global treaty on domestic workers’ rights, the Convention on Domestic Workers adopted at the International Labour Organization, which was passed in 2011. And because of the work of HRW and other organizations we have seen some changes. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have amended some aspects of the kafala system.

The biggest potential change is Qatar, which has committed with the ILO to other reforms, including reforming the kafala system by moving toward a government issued visa for migrant workers. If Qatar actually does reform the kafala system, potentially this could lead the rest of the Gulf region into a different situation entirely.

CAIRO REVIEW: How much are recruitment agencies involved with legal, semi-legal, and illegal recruitment of workers? To what degree are authorities involved?
ROTHNA BEGUM: To start off, in the last two to three years we’ve seen a huge surge in recruitment from African countries, including domestic workers, because Asian countries have stepped up protection for their workers, and also placed bans on their workers coming into the Gulf region due to abuses. The problem is that the Asian countries have had to build up laws and recruitment policies, and figure out protection mechanisms at their embassies to help manage this recruitment and protect their workers. Now, it’s not perfect, but they are decades ahead of countries in Africa.

In terms of illegal versus legal recruitment, for Middle Eastern countries, if you have a visa to come into the country, and then an employer secures you a work permit, it’s perfectly legal. That doesn’t mean you didn’t come in as a trafficked victim. You could have been promised by an agent from your country of origin a certain wage or certain conditions, turn up at the country, and find yourself basically trafficked into forced labor conditions. The system recognizes you as a legal worker, but you’re still a trafficking victim.

On the country of origin side there are recruitment agencies, some of which are registered with the government, but there’s no proper oversight to check whether a worker is going with a registered or unregistered agent. I spoke to registered recruitment agents from agencies that are credited with the government who were committing what you would consider to be classic trafficking or forced labor violations, which they sent to me themselves, because they didn’t see it as bad practice. One agent, for instance, was forcing women to sign a document saying that they would not return early from their contract including under circumstances where they would have fallen pregnant, or had a relationship with their employer, or they could be fined $2,000.

CAIRO REVIEW: Do you really think that these agents don’t realize their actions border on slavery, or at least, forced labor?
ROTHNA BEGUM: Well this agent told me how he prevents workers from leaving their contracts early as a normal protection measure for himself. And he knows that I’m speaking to the government. I think if he knew it was bad practice he wouldn’t be admitting that to me.

The issue is not with this agent particularly, but with the policies and laws and the government. These policies are so bad and have so little to do with the recruitment agencies, that the agent is not actually committing anything illegal. I think there’s a deficit in the understanding of some of these governments about how to protect these workers. Some of these governments are too busy focusing on how they can send their workers over to other neighboring countries. Some government officials and members of parliament may be benefitting from the recruitment, so there’s a whole other issue of public officials who are invested in these recruitment agencies, who realize this is a business venture, and are part of these ventures now. One way to resolve that is to have laws that say that government officials cannot be investing or partnering with these agencies.

CAIRO REVIEW: You mentioned Kuwait as one of the best countries for some kind of legal representation. Why do you think that is?
ROTHNA BEGUM: Kuwait in 2015 was the most progressive in the Gulf region, but that doesn’t mean that’s the case anymore, because the UAE and Qatar have established laws since 2015 which are similar and have their own standards so they vary in their quality. So Kuwait provides overtime compensation which the other two don’t. The UAE provides workplace inspections, which Kuwait has not established when it comes to the homes themselves. So on different points they’re stronger, and weaker on others. The problem is that the abuses have continued in Kuwait because of an inability to properly recognize their rights under the kafala system. So as a worker, even though you now have some rights under the law, how do you claim those rights if you are still tied to your employer?

CAIRO REVIEW: Do you think such a patriarchal, dominant system as the kafala system could ever realistically be reformed?
ROTHNA BEGUM: I think we’re seeing the beginning of it. I think that because of their commitment to the ILO, Qatar will be the first example of seeing whether or not they will actually amend the system.

CAIRO REVIEW: But still maintain the idea that you’re tied to your employer?
ROTHNA BEGUM: Well, Qatar has committed to reforming the kafala system and their commitments have to come through in a way that means they can’t be still trafficking workers into false labor situations. And currently the kafala system is an exploitative environment that allows forced labor situations because of the way it is designed. It traps you with that sponsor. They have to do away with this.

CAIRO REVIEW: How do you feel about the future of migrants in the Gulf?
ROTHNA BEGUM: I have mixed feelings. We have seen some changes in the Gulf region that wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t a level of commitment and passion and hard work by many organizations and advocates. But the abuses still continue. We want to make sure that those changes are strong, that they come much faster. Gulf countries are succeeding largely on the backs of these workers that have come in the millions; they should not be allowed to get away with the kinds of abuses they have been.

So I don’t want to accept the small achievements as a consolation prize, for the work that has been done. We want to see real results; we want to really see such a cultural change because there’s been a serious commitment by these governments.

But that won’t happen unless there is a serious commitment from countries of origin to their citizen populations and from the international community to say they won’t tolerate this situation where the entire system is designed to have an an easily exploited labor force.

Blerta Aliko heads UN Women Egypt whose main objective is to empower women and reduce gender inequality. Appointed as the country representative in January 2018, Aliko brings over twenty-two years of experience to her position along with new perspectives on how to transform intersecting gender-related issues in Egypt. Most recently, Aliko held the position of deputy regional director for the UN Women Regional Office for Arab States in Cairo, and prior to that has worked with other UN development and humanitarian programs, including UNDP and UNICEF. On April 11, Aliko spoke to the Cairo Review about UN Women Egypt, and how it works closely with the government, civil society organizations, private sector, multilateral partners, and the wider public to empower women socially, economically, and politically.

CAIRO REVIEW: How has your background impacted your approach to UN Women Egypt?
BLERTA ALIKO: What I bring to this position is an in-depth understanding of the context and the unique added-value of UN Women.  In order to assist the enhancement of policy and programs supporting women’s rights in Egypt, it is crucial to understand the potential to influence that UN Women has as an organization.  UN Women Egypt has a technical niche, a strong national team of experts and a position in the multilateral partner arena, but we also recognize that there is more that we can do to maximize the organization’s potential.

CAIRO REVIEW: What are some of the development projects you are working on?
BLERTA ALIKO: We are currently working on three focus areas. The first area focuses on increasing women’s participation and leadership, particularly through increasing women’s citizenship rights by providing women with ID cards. The possession of ID cards is crucial to exercising citizenship rights, such as the right to vote, work, access services and participate in society. As a result, we have supported the issuance of approximately 450,000 ID cards to women across Egypt.

The second focus is on women’s economic empowerment, which begins with giving marginalized women financial literacy training. UN Women Egypt works with the private sector to engage women who usually work in the informal sector, and employ them in the agriculture labor force through fixed-term contracts, ensuring social security and providing training. And through a project called “One Village One Product,” UN Women Egypt supports communities where women are known to produce a particular product by giving them a comparative advantage that would increase the product’s access to market and, in turn, the profit margin of the women’s enterprises.

The third focus area is ending violence against women. As part of the global “Safe Cities” program, UN Women Egypt is renovating spaces, including creating areas that women can access freely and safely to create commercial enterprises.

CAIRO REVIEW: Female genital mutilation is an issue women face across this region. How has this issue been understood and dealt with from the policy perspective in Egypt?
BLERTA ALIKO: Egypt has managed to decrease female genital mutilation in the younger generations from 74 percent to 61 percent. The penalty for female genital mutilation has now increased to a sentence of up to seven years in prison. Combatting female genital mutilation is also part of a social movement led by a variety of influencers such as women’s rights advocates, doctors, and religious scholars, among others influencing Egyptian families to stop the practice. The movement on combating female genital mutilation in Egypt drove decision makers in Egypt to place it on the national agenda of the Egyptian government, launching the “National Strategy and Program Against Female Genital Mutilation.”

It is widely recognized that women themselves play a critical role in perpetuating the female genital mutilation practice against their own young daughters. Therefore, I believe their further empowerment, education, and access to employment would have a strong impact on preventing and reducing the practice of female genital mutilation. Role models too are critical as they have a positive and pivotal influence on the mass population.

CAIRO REVIEW: You worked in Liberia, Myanmar, Haiti and Yemen, can you elaborate on how the challenges in Egypt differ from these areas you have dealt with in your career?
BLERTA ALIKO: Every context is different and as a professional it is your responsibility to learn and understand your own professional and personal environment. With regards to women’s empowerment, what is important is to understand the root causes of the marginalization of women and why patriarchal repressive norms continue, and to be able to find effective strategies for reducing gender inequality. Our niche is to focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized. That is where we need to support this segment of women, in order to have inclusive communities, more developed communities, and more progressive households.

In Egypt’s context, for example, we have one of the most progressive constitutions promoting women’s rights, as well as a very solid National Strategy on women’s empowerment demonstrating the political will from the government to advance women’s rights as the accelerator for Egypt’s sustainable development.

CAIRO REVIEW: What initiatives do you hope to accomplish?
BLERTA ALIKO: One of our objectives is to increase efforts to tackle violence against women, be it domestic violence or sexual harassment in public spaces—considering how crucial the prevalence of violence against women is as a fundamental development indicator. Secondly, we aim to champion and create opportunities for inclusive development. By “inclusive” I mean a significant increase of women in the job market and their financial inclusion. We need to make sure that the employability of women does not come at the expense of women being discriminated against in the job market.

Furthermore, we also have upcoming local council elections. The constitution grants women 25 percent of seats in the local councils. This means that more than 25,000 seats can be occupied by women. Egyptian women need to take hold of those seats, but we need to work very hard to support them and support their capacities when exercising their functions. Women will be judged on how they will be performing, which is why performing in positions effectively—by not only filling seats with women—will be important. We are convinced that if we have very strong, capable candidates and we support them appropriately, our local development plans will prioritize gender equality, and will be more gender responsive.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Arab countries have the lowest labor force participation rate for women in the world. At just 21 percent, the region lags behind the 48.7 percent globe participation rate. Compare this to a female labor force participation rate of 59 percent in East Asia and Pacific, and 63 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the fact despite increasing access to education among women in the region. Arab women face very high unemployment rates, particularly among the young and educated. The situation of Arab women’s labor force participation is a puzzle that has generated much heated debate.

Women’s economic empowerment has both intrinsic and instrumental merits. Their earning power is good for their agency and for everyone in the household. When women have earning power, they are able to make better strategic life decisions such as pursuing education, delaying marriage, postponing and spacing children, walking out of abusive relationships, and investing in children’s education and health. Women’s work has been globally shown to be good for reducing fertility rates and child mortality, and for increasing children’s access to education. Simply put, when women work, everyone around them benefits.

Unfortunately, the Arab region falls behind in creating jobs to match the large size of male and female entrants to the labor markets. Job creation affects both men and women. However, when jobs are scarce, Arab women are more likely than Arab men to be pushed out of work. Compromised job quality in the form of low pay and lack of job security also remain paramount  in the region. And although this affects everyone, because of the demands on women’s time due to family obligations, bad job quality can render opting out of work the only viable option for them.

Understanding Women’s Employment
The puzzle of Arab women’s low employment rate is further compounded by the fact that the region has witnessed significant strides in women’s access to education. Data on average years of schooling for young women aged 15–19 doubled from a low average of 3.5 years in 1980 to an average of 8.1 years in 2010. More importantly, the tertiary or postsecondary education stage shows the highest rate of reverse gender gap in the world. The ratio of young women to young men in tertiary education tripled between 1975 and 2010 to reach 112 percent. More women are educated in the Arab World but still very few of them are working. This has propelled some researchers to call women’s low participation rates in the region “the gender paradox of the Middle East.”

Further adding to this puzzle is that labor force participation rates also include the unemployed. By definition, as long as an individual is searching for a job, s/he is part of the labor market. So these low figures of participation also include a large proportion of women who are not working but are actively searching for jobs. These are mostly young educated women. If we look at data on youth unemployment in Egypt, we find that unemployed women constitute more than two-thirds of unemployed youth. Similar figures are shown in other countries in the region. In that sense, we can safely say that the face of unemployment in the region is that of the young woman. These statistics touch on the lives of many young women, with economic exclusion augmenting other forms of social exclusion and leading to their marginalization. Women’s limited access to work curbs their role in public life and renders them invisible in many fields. This is a loss to everyone.

Should We Blame It on Culture?
A large body of research has sought to explain women’s limited labor force participation. A most common approach has been to blame it on culture. It has been repeatedly argued that cultural norms, both at the labor supply and the demand sides, curb the potential for Arab women’s employment. Proponents of this argument bring to the fore issues of gender propriety and restrictions on women’s mobility on the labor supply side. Some also note that employers internalize these values and discriminate against women in their hiring practices, hence lowering the demand for women’s employment.

Yet, sociologist Homa Hoodfar has long taken issue with this argument. She notes that the focus on gender ideology reflects an unrealistic vision of Middle Easterners as living in the realm of ideology while the rest of the world lives within economic structures. While we cannot ignore the power of culture in impacting  individual decisions and the structure of opportunities around them, it is important to remember that culture is malleable and is often negotiated across contexts and over time. Culture is never fixed and this is what makes studying it both challenging and refreshing.

Cultural constructs can be utilized in legitimating decisions for women to work or to stay at home. These constructs can be useful tools in validating the removal of women from labor markets when jobs are scarce. The best example of this would be American women being told to “go back to the kitchen” post-World War II. However, the lesson we also learn from history is that cultural constructs are not immune to the tide of change.

Beyond culture, many researchers decided to focus on other potential barriers to women’s employment in the region. Particularly, there has been a focus on the impact of macro-economic policies on women’s employment. The “social contract” in Arab countries, it has been argued, has dampened the need for women’s participation in the workforce and hence augmented the role of a male breadwinner. This social contract has been historically enacted with the state providing subsidies for food and fuel, and a relatively generous remuneration structure in the public sector. Other researchers are focused on the impact of oil production on women’s employment, arguing that oil revenues in producing countries, and the remittances from male migrant workers into non-producing countries, both raised what economists describe as the “reservation wage,” or the minimum acceptable wage, of female workers and again augmented the image of a male breadwinner.

Alternatively, it was argued that oil revenues increased jobs in male-dominated, non-tradable, capital-intensive sectors such as construction and extractive industries. These sectors are inhospitable to women in general due to their difficult working conditions. Neoliberal policies further complicated the employment potential for women with the retrenchment of jobs in the public sector, which has been the key sector of employment among educated women.

Are We at a Tipping Point?
Most of the arguments explaining women’s limited participation, however, have been time-bound and sector-specific. With the erosion of subsidies and the slowing of public-sector hiring in most countries in the region, the social contract hypothesis can no more explain women’s limited labor force participation. Similarly, most countries in the region are particularly keen on diversifying their economies and encouraging the role of the private sector in job creation, albeit to varied degrees of success. The male migrant effect argument is also weakening with the gradual nationalization of jobs in oil-producing countries.

If some of the factors that explain women’s limited labor force participation are waning, can we fathom a gradual change in the patterns of women’s employment? My answer is a cautious yes. Other researchers have argued that it is an outright yes. A good example is researcher Saadia Zahidi’s recent book where she highlights the rising presence of women in labor markets across the Islamic world, with particular focus on South Asian countries. She quotes me as one of those arguing for a cautious yes. My reasons for the tentative “yes” stem from the fact that while some of the structural barriers have been waning, the region still needs better and more plentiful jobs. The Arab region is particularly lagging in creating jobs to match the large size of male and female entrants to the labor markets. The anemic growth of the private sector has curbed its potential to create these needed jobs. Job creation affects both men and women; however when jobs are scarce, women are pushed out of work. Job quality, low pay, and lack of job security are also a problem. Because of the bad quality of jobs and pressing family obligations, women have often opted out of work.

As we come closer to a tipping point, a lot still needs to be done to address women’s employment issues in the Arab region with job creation and job quality as key targets. But there is also need for gender-specific policies.

The earlier discussion of the high unemployment rates among women is a good starting point. There is serious need for women-focused active labor market policies. These are policies that encourage job seekers by engaging them in skill building activities, job search support, and business startups. I have looked at some of these programs in the region. While some are spearheaded by the state in a number of countries, such as those in the Maghreb, others are primarily offered by civil society organizations such as in Egypt and countries in the Levant. In most cases, these programs have focused on educated young men in the region. The political volatility of this group has earned them this special attention. However, this myopic policy focus ignores the fact that women constitute the majority of unemployed youth in the whole region.

It is also the right time to discuss gender-sensitive employment policies in the region. These have been discussed at length in other contexts, particularly in countries in the North, and increasingly in countries in the South. For example, policies to make childcare accessible and affordable, paid maternity leaves, and flexible work arrangements have been shown to have a very positive impact on the decision of women with children to participate in the labor force.

Similarly, women’s employment has been shown to respond to improvement in access to social services. Globally, improved access to good services such as transportation in cities or access to electricity and water in the countryside is associated with increased female labor force participation. Discussions of these issues need to be further studied in the Arab World.

The New “Gig” and Continued Job Precariousness
The “gig” economy is increasingly recognized as a potential venue for increased women’s employment. With rising access to technology and education in high- and middle-income Arab countries, the Arab World is quite active in the “gig” economy. Middle-class Egyptians are now familiar with women offering to drive children to school via social media networks, and other working women offering to deliver ready-made meals from restaurants. Anecdotally, we also know that work-on-demand applications and platforms, such as Uber, are also starting to attract women drivers in Egypt. Recently, there was news about car-hailing services planning on hiring women as drivers in Gulf countries. As researchers, we have little knowledge about the size of this burgeoning economy due to under-reporting.

This is particularly the case because many of the participants in this nascent sector do not consider themselves employed in the traditional sense of the word.

Before we start celebrating the gig economy as a panacea for all that ails working women, it is important to remember that not all employment is empowering. Clearly, much of the gig economy revolves around short-term gigs that are mostly service related (Uber driving, Otlob telephone operators, etc.). While some service industry jobs can be empowering, oftentimes these types of jobs are low paying and do not provide workers—male or female—with good wages leading to upwardly mobile lifestyles.

If we are at a tipping point of more Arab women working, this should not be an end unto itself. With the discussion on a prospective growing presence of women in Arab labor markets, other challenges come to the fore. The key issues Arab women will face are those of employment informality and job uncertainty, for both self- employed and wage workers.

Job informality refers to undocumented employment relations for wage workers and to a lack of registration for the self-employed. In both cases, lack of access to social protection in the form of pension schemes is the most problematic aspect of job informality. As wage workers, working women pushed by poverty often land in low-compensation and low-productivity sectors. Economic activities of this nature do not allow for access to protection measures such as old-age social pensions unemployment or disability benefits. Consequently, job precariousness perpetuates cycles of poverty.

Job informality is a serious challenge in the Arab region, with less than one-third of workers contributing to social pension schemes, according to the International Labour Organization. For many working women, the choice to join the labor market, either as a wage or self-employed worker, can be a choice made with little options available. When women are pushed by poverty to join the labor market, they land in precarious forms of employment.

While informal employment has been historically associated with low education, more educated workers are also faced with informality, particularly in middle-income countries in the Arab World. As self-employed workers, skill level is key to the success of a business. This is the case for male and female workers. However, the key challenge is that globally women’s self-employment is in low-income activities that aim at economic survival and that do not make the transition to formality and growth.

Back to Culture
While I started this article by noting that we cannot simply state that culture is the reason for women’s lower participation rates in the Arab World, I come back now to culture. When we look at Arab culture, we must discuss regulatory frameworks that have augmented traditional values and curbed women’s labor force participation in the region.

While all Arab countries have now ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)—which requires states to enshrine gender equality in legislation and repeal any discriminatory provisions identified in laws—all ratifying Arab countries have had reservations on some key articles of the CEDAW and continue to harbor certain discriminatory practices. These discriminatory practices vary across the region. Some countries limit women’s personal autonomy including freedom of mobility. Others require women to obtain the approval of a male guardian while applying for a passport, for traveling outside the country, or for work outside the home.

If women are bound to increasingly join the labor market, state policies need to catch up with the global change in gender norms for women. It is key to address discriminatory regulatory practices that limit women’s mobility. Similarly, limiting female access to skill building and other active labor market policies in the region cannot be justified. Placing laws that would regulate informal employment should be high on the policy agenda for both working men and women. The social protection deficit among wage workers and the self-employed in the region needs to be addressed by innovative measures of flexible social insurance mechanisms. There has been a growing body of research on the viability of micro-insurance programs, with research showing that they provide value by helping low-income populations cope with losses and enhancing their long-term wellbeing. Recently, Egypt has introduced a program of micro-insurance to informal workers. More studies are needed to test the effectiveness of this approach and its relevance to the context.

Women’s employment is good for the economy, increasing productivity and the total labor force participation rates. When more women work, this alters perceptions about the value of work for women and changes cultural norms. Women’s employment is also central to a policy agenda addressing overpopulation. Global evidence suggests that women working outside the home have lower fertility rates. As such women’s economic empowerment is good news for everyone, men and women.

Women’s employment is not simply a “women’s issue.” Just recently, G20 leaders committed to a “25 by 25” plan, which aims to reduce the gap in labor market participation rates between men and women by 25 percent by 2025. Many have argued that if achieved, this objective would raise global Gross Domestic Product in 2025 by 3.9 percent. One report by the International Labour Organization showed that the Arab World stands to benefit the most if this goal is achieved. A policy focus on women’s economic empowerment in the region is not only timely, but also urgent.

Ghada Barsoum is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo.  She served as consultant to the International Labour Organization and other UN organizations, and was principal investigator of two projects funded by the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme. Prior to joining AUC, Barsoum was research associate at the Population Council’s West Asia and North Africa Office. Barsoum is the author of more than forty publications, including peer-reviewed articles and a book titled The Employment Crisis of Female Graduates in Egypt: An Ethnographic Account.

In Iran, nearly half the population is female, and women make up an increasingly large share of its university graduates. Women are seen everywhere in Iran. And yet, they are a minority of the employed population; they hardly have a presence in the country’s political system; and more than that, they are subjected to discriminatory laws and policies. 

In previous writing, I have identified development strategies in general, and the oil economy in particular, as key to understanding female labor supply and demand. In the 1990s I compared countries such as oil-rich Algeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia with the more diversified economies of Morocco and Tunisia, and found that a larger number of women worked in Morocco and Tunisia. Since my earlier analyses, there has been some increase in female employment and more in educational attainment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), along with a decline in fertility rates. Also noticeable is the growth in women’s political representation, particularly in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, where constitutions or political parties have adopted quotas.

Within the MENA region, Iranian women themselves participate less in the workforce than they should, given the country’s socioeconomic development and women’s higher education enrollment and graduation rates. Why that is the case has to do with Iran’s structural and institutional features. Specifically, reasons for low levels of women’s employment in Iran lie in the nature of the development strategies that the Iranian government has pursued across the decades, and its political system, which in turn has reinforced a patriarchal gender regime.

Feminist scholars have discussed the concept of the gender regime (sometimes also known as the “gender order” or the “gender system”). The gender regime is how the social relations of sex are organized around certain crucial issues such as politics or labor. It is the product of a country’s development strategies and political system, and it can be observed through the legal and institutional frameworks in place, women’s formal civil, political, and social rights of citizenship, and indicators of women’s socioeconomic and political participation. For MENA countries, I have hypothesized that a transition from a “neo-patriarchal” to a “modern” gender regime is underway in Morocco and Tunisia (and to a lesser extent in Algeria), mainly as a result of the activities of women’s rights organizations, but also because of economic and political changes in those countries. Iran’s gender regime, however, remains neo-patriarchal.

Modernization, Revolution and Islamization: A Brief Overview
As a large country with an abundance of oil, Iran was a U.S. ally from 1953 until the 1979 revolution. Modernization took place in the 1930s under Shah Reza Pahlavi, and contention with Britain over control of Iran’s oil production and revenues came to a head in the early 1950s, leading to the 1953 coup d’état against Premier Mohammad Mossadegh. Modernization continued under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with oil revenues financing the country’s strategy of rapid economic and social development. Not only were women given the right to vote, but this period also saw steady increases in urban women’s employment. Rural women remained concentrated in agricultural work and carpet-weaving. A combination of rising aspirations, unmet expectations, and opposition to monarchical rule led to an anti-Shah revolutionary coalition that culminated in an Islamist-dominated government in February 1979.

By 1981 non-Islamists in Iran had been purged from various institutions and the theocratic republic had been established. Moreover, a new ideological climate, inscribed legally in new clauses within the country’s civil code as well as the new constitution, associated women with marriage and the family. New laws strengthened men’s privileges in the areas of marriage, divorce, and control over female kin.

Although the new Islamic constitution called for economic diversification, oil production and exports remained dominant, especially after the eight-year-long war with Iraq (1980–88), as Iran sought to reconstruct its economy and rebuild devastated areas.

During the 1990s, a family planning campaign was introduced to counter the rising population growth that had occurred in the 1980s. Schooling increased, but job opportunities for women were scarce, other than in a limited number of professional fields in the health and education sectors. In 1990, the female labor force share in Iran was just 10.9 percent. By 2010, that figure rose to 17.9 percent and in 2017 the World Bank reported it to be 19 percent. Iran’s official census data, however, sets it at a mere 13–14.5 percent in 2014–15.

Women’s share of professional jobs has increased, and—in urban areas in particular—their presence in public sector jobs, at nearly 28 percent of the total, is higher than men’s (19 percent of the total), according to census data. Yet, it is women’s marginal position in the private sector that reduces their overall labor force share.

Like other countries, Iran is an active participant in the international system, but the diffusion of norms pertaining to women’s participation and rights through international organizations and international non-governmental organizations has not had a sufficiently strong effect. For example, Iran has not signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 and in force since 1981. (Neither has the United States signed it, while Saudi Arabia’s sweeping reservation essentially renders CEDAW moot.) And yet there has been significant progress in Iranian women’s marrying age, fertility rates, and political activism. Modernization and economic development have led to the growth of an educated female middle class with aspirations for greater participation and rights, but the capacity for women to mobilize and attain legal and policy reforms has been limited.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Iran followed the typical Third World pattern of import-substitution industrialization while remaining dependent on oil revenues for foreign exchange and to finance imports and development projects. Oil revenues were used for domestic investment, and Iran saw the emergence of an industrial labor force. The modern manufacturing sector grew with all manner of appliances and food products, auto assembly plants, and foreign investments in iron and steel production. Oil wealth had financed Iran’s economic development, including infrastructural development and state-owned industries, and helped modernize agriculture. Nevertheless, foreign exchange from oil sales constituted the accumulation of capital, and the contribution of petroleum to the national income in the oil and mixed oil economies, including Iran’s, made the share of other sectors appear  insignificant.

In studies of political economy, a “rentier state” is one in which a large portion of a country’s revenues comes from the rent of the country’s resources to outside states and companies as well as domestic elites. While much has been written about rentier states’ economies, less has been written about their gender dynamics. When a state depends on “rents” (state-owned oil, minerals, tourism, or waterways), it accrues wealth without needing to rely on income-based taxes and can distribute the wealth almost at will. The implications are both economic, in that diversification is forestalled, and political, in that the state is less accountable to its citizenry. Governments may use oil wealth to provide relatively high wages to their workers. Analyzing wage trends in the manufacturing sector cross-nationally, economics professor Massoud Karshenas showed that workers’ wages were higher in most MENA countries than they were in Asian countries such as Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia.

This state of affairs has helped reduce the female labor supply in Iran. The development strategy of the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s, relatively limited industrialization, and the presence of high wages for men worked to the benefit of a male working class, but not to the formation of a female working class. Like many states in the MENA region, the Iranian state did rely on women to serve as teachers and health workers, to occupy some positions in public administration, and to work in certain factories. The oil economy therefore reinforced what I called the patriarchal gender contract—the implicit and often explicit agreement that men are the breadwinners responsible for financially maintaining wives, children, and elderly parents, and that women are wives, homemakers, mothers, and caregivers.

In the 1990s, Iran managed to use its oil wealth to finance its own manufacturing sectors, develop its physical and social infrastructure, educate its population, and produce a formidable military along with nuclear capacity. Women’s educational attainment steadily increased as the gender gap in secondary schooling closed and women’s university enrollments in the academic year 2000–01 exceeded those of men for the first time. The economy grew and the government developed new institutions that boosted opportunities for the expansion of modern services—education, medicine, finance, law, engineering, new technologies, and the like. Although subsidies and other mechanisms were in place to prevent or alleviate poverty, income inequality increased by the end of the 1990s, private-sector wage earners suffered the highest poverty rates, and the majority of Iranian households contained just one income earner. According to the 2006 census, women made up just under 15 percent of the formal labor force.

In 2007, Iran’s service sector (including government) contributed 56 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), followed by the hydrocarbon sector with 25 percent, and agriculture with 10 percent. Iran ranked second in the world in natural gas reserves and third in oil reserves; unsurprisingly, its chief source of foreign exchange is derived from oil and gas. International prices of oil and gas fluctuate, which means that aggregate GDP and government revenues are intrinsically volatile. Although Iran followed what the World Bank called “prudent macroeconomic policies,” it came to face economic difficulties resulting largely from the application of strict economic and banking sanctions and embargoes by the United States and Europe. Boom and bust cycles in economic performance led to private sector uncertainty, which impeded investment and job creation. The state sector continued to invest in the capital-intensive, almost exclusively male-dominated, sectors of oil, gas, and nuclear power.

The Iranian state’s inability to attract foreign direct investment of the type that might generate employment for women has contributed to the persistence of a small female labor force and an even smaller female working class. The sanctions regime, of course, has had an adverse effect, but Iran’s free trade zones, established mostly in southern regions along the Persian Gulf for export to neighboring countries, did not become the “back doors to the international economy” that the authorities had hoped for. In previous research, Middle East scholar Hassan Hakimian showed that while the free trade zones had a modest workforce to begin with (at some 45,000), the rate of job creation for women was weak. He concluded that, “Iran’s experience of free zones in the past one and a half decades has failed to achieve its principal objectives of attracting FDI [Foreign Direct Investment], diversifying non-oil exports and generating new jobs.” Data for 2016–17 shows that the most lucrative free trade zone, in Arvand, consists of refinery industries.

In 2011, Iran was still characterized by a large hydrocarbon sector, small-scale private agriculture and services, and a noticeable state presence in manufacturing and finance. While Iran’s economy had shifted toward a market-based economy, the financial sector was largely dominated by public banks, and the state still played a key role, owning large public and quasi-public manufacturing and commercial enterprises. Over 60 percent of the manufacturing sector’s output was produced by state-owned enterprises. The government’s 2010–15 five-year plan aimed to privatize some 20 percent of state-owned firms (SOEs) each year, although it appeared that assets of SOEs were largely purchased by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps or other semi-governmental enterprises.

The presence of state-owned or parastatal monopolies, combined with a strategy in the first two decades after the revolution that favored self-employment and the expansion of the informal sector, created an economic and labor market environment that was not conducive to female labor incorporation. Iran’s small-scale manufacturing sector continued to produce handicrafts, carpets, and rugs, and women could be found in that sector. Yet according to official statistics, such women workers were typically unpaid as contributing family members rather than paid manufacturing workers. In 1996, only a quarter of the female manufacturing workforce was salaried. The 2006 Iranian census showed that women’s share of manufacturing was 18.7 percent, down from 38.2 percent in 1976 (largely concentrated in rural areas). An interview I had with a female statistician in Tehran in 1994 revealed that the decline in women’s manufacturing labor was linked to the decline of carpet exports during the war with Iraq and later competition from China. Young rural women might also have been withdrawing from traditional manufacturing because of a new trend of completing schooling.

Indeed, female educational attainment increased, as between 1999 and 2011, secondary and tertiary-level enrollments doubled. At the postsecondary level, the female share of master’s degree enrollments for the academic year 2006-07 was over half in medicine and basic sciences, and only in engineering were female graduate students underrepresented, at 25.5 percent.

Women’s employment correlates with educational attainment; those with just elementary education are less likely to join the labor force, whereas having higher degrees tends to raise women’s participation sharply. Married women are less likely to enter the labor force, although highly educated women, married or not, tend to remain at their jobs for longer periods. By 2012, the 20 percent of women in manufacturing included educated women in managerial or technical positions in the larger industrial firms as well as in the oil and gas industry.

According to Iran’s 2016 labor force survey, the private sector is now the largest employer, engaging 76.2 percent of the female labor force (and 85.6 percent of male workers). The female share of agricultural labor is 23.4 percent, of industry 24.1 percent, and of services 52.5 percent. And yet, very few Iranian women are in the total labor force. Nationally the female population is 39.4 million, of which perhaps half could be considered to be of working age. As such out of a total labor force of 21.3 million, just 3 million Iranian women are employed. If we compare these 3 million Iranian working women to a total of 18.2 million working men, the gender divide in employment becomes clear.

Not only are few women employed, but those who do seek jobs find it difficult to join the labor force. The female unemployment rate has remained high: in 2004, some 43 percent of young women with university education were unemployed, compared with 22.5 percent of university-educated men. The 2006 census showed that women’s total unemployment rate was 23.3 percent, more than twice that of men. A decade later this had barely changed; according to the 2016 labor force survey, women’s unemployment is nearly 22 percent, compared with 10.4 percent for men.

Given high unemployment and inflation in Iran, it is likely that a majority of non-employed women engage in home-based economic activities, both high-end and low-end. During fieldwork in Iran in 1994, I observed the presence of home-based beauty and dressmaking enterprises discreetly located within neighborhoods. Similarly, Roksana Bahramitash and Shahla Kazemipour, and Fatemeh Moghadam, have found that the upper-middle-class women missing from the official labor force statistics are actually engaged in home-based income-generating activities.

Such women—whose activities may include making and selling jewelry or special jams, providing catering services, tutoring or counseling, desktop publishing, and directing Pilates or yoga classes—may prefer to undertake work at home rather than acquiesce to the strictures of the dress code and other irritants associated with formal sector employment. A much larger number of women from low-income and working-class families similarly engage in home-based informal labor—providing dressmaking, beauty, catering, counseling, childcare, or transportation services—to supplement the incomes of their spouses and otherwise contribute to the household. Such women work individually rather than as part of collective enterprises, and are not present in official statistics.

Therefore, the structural features that have worked against enhanced female labor force participation in Iran are: a large hydrocarbon sector and the noticeable state presence in manufacturing and finance, which is more receptive to male rather than female labor; and the absence of significant foreign direct investment in sectors that might be both labor-intensive and female-intensive. Since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian state has encouraged some women to enter the fields of education and healthcare, if only to teach and administer healthcare to women and girls, but in general the state prefers that women remain at home and care for their families. As a result, the traditional sexual division of labor—which I termed the patriarchal gender contract—continues to operate and is especially strong within working-class and lower-income households.

If an oil-based development strategy can entrench the patriarchal gender contract, the growth of Islamist movements and governments also reinforce women’s subordinate position within the family and society. In early writings, I identified the MENA state as neo-patriarchal, whereby the state is engaged in both economic modernization and the preservation of the traditional family. The modernizing and traditionalist tendencies of states were variable across the region, but the patriarchal elements in Iran specifically were strengthened after the Iranian revolution and the spread of Islamist movements in the 1980s. A principal demand of Islamist movements has been the strengthening of Muslim family law, which is a key institutional barrier to enhancing female economic participation—to women’s autonomy, mobility, and financial independence. In Iran specifically, whereas the 1960s and 1970s saw the creation of job opportunities for working-class and middle-class women, along with a modern family law in 1973, the trend was reversed after the Islamic revolution, especially for working-class women.

The Political System
Patriarchy has been a longstanding feature of MENA social structures, though it has been fraying in recent decades as a result of women’s educational attainment and employment along with the global diffusion of norms of women’s participation and rights, which has led many governments to adopt women-friendly legislation and policies. The 1960s–70s saw Iranian women receive the right to vote (1963), experience inroads into modern employment, benefit from a reformed family code (1973). This era also witnessed the appointment of the first women’s affairs minister (1976) and the first woman judge (1975). Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, however, halted the transition in the gender regime and substituted Islamization for modernization of gender relations.

In the 1970s, Iranian women occupied about 12 percent of the labor force, but this declined to about 10 percent after the Islamic revolution of 1979, as a result of purges of ideologically non-conforming women professionals, exile, the closure of factories, and—as noted above—the decline of work for rural women following the loss of the carpet export markets. The early years of the Islamic Republic were characterized by intense ideological contention between the ruling Islamists and leftists and liberals, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, a war economy, and violent repression. The new Islamic state instituted a number of laws that affected women’s legal status and social positions. The abrogation of the 1973 Family Protection Act was followed by the reintroduction to the Civil Code of polygamy, the Shia practice of muta’a, or temporary marriage, and male unilateral divorce.

Quotas for women in fields of study were implemented, and women were banned from being judges, although they could serve as lawyers. A male guardian—father or husband—was needed for many transactions by women; veiling was made compulsory; and women’s political representation was almost insignificant. There was some opposition but the new gender regime was also welcomed by a large section of the Iranian female population. As political scientist and gender expert Hamideh Sedghi has shown, the class and cultural divides of the 1970s generated some female support for the Islamist agenda, with its anti-Western stance and promotion of Islamic and family values.

At the close of the 1980s, new developments affected the legal status and social positions of women. The end of the Iran–Iraq War, the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the presidential term of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani saw the easing of social restrictions along with the end of the war economy and initiation of privatization and liberalization. A reform movement—rooted in both the incipient civil society and in political society—began to blossom in the early 1990s, culminating in the presidential election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997. New movements of feminists, students, journalists, and human rights advocates were supported by political allies in two reformist parliaments (the Fifth and Sixth Majles, or parliament, 1996–2004) and the Khatami  government.

In the 1990s, the government instituted a widespread and very effective family planning program, which was embraced by most Iranian women and saw a dramatic fall in fertility rates. The flourishing of civil society saw the emergence of Islamic feminism, along with secular feminist NGOs and a feminist press. Some legal reforms occurred during the Fifth parliament and the reformist Sixth parliament for women’s rights in the fields of education, divorce, and travel.

This period ended with the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad government, which closed down the independent NGOs, including a burgeoning independent workers’ union. The highly contested results of the 2009 presidential election—which saw the re-election of Ahmadinejad—generated the Green Protests, in which women had a strong presence. After several days, the protests were brutally put down. To entrench the patriarchal gender regime even further, Ahmadinejad called Iranian feminism “a threat to national security,” harassing the women’s NGOs, arresting a number of feminist activists, and leading to the exile of several others. Some of the most prominent names in the Iranian feminist movement—Shirin Ebadi, Parvin Ardalan, Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, Nargess Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh—were questioned, arrested, imprisoned, or had their offices raided and computers removed.

Although Shirin Ebadi and some other activists were the product of pre-revolutionary modernization, a younger generation of Iranian women activists who grew up in the Islamic Republic has acquired a new outlook on their legal status and social positions as a result of educational attainment and knowledge of international trends.

Indeed, recent studies by UNESCO and the World Bank showed that by 2010 gender parity had been achieved at the secondary level; the majority of students in higher education were female; fully 68 percent of science students were women; and the female share of Ph.D. graduates was 35 percent. Many joined pro-women’s NGOs, sought employment, decided to defy the state’s cultural and social restrictions in various ways, or ran for political office.

Women are important political constituents in elections and many have run for seats in the majles, but the reality is that Iranian women are excluded from any real power, making the Iranian political system among the most masculinist in the world. Women members of the majles make up an insignificant proportion, and the senior women in government, such as the various vice-presidents, seem not to have any influence on key economic, foreign policy, political, cultural, or social matters.

Iranian women’s participation and representation in the formal political structure is among the lowest in the world: 3 percent female parliamentary representation and 3 percent female share of ministerial positions in 2012, increasing to a mere 6 percent following the 2016 parliamentary elections. Unlike many other countries, Iran has not instituted gender quotas to enhance women’s political representation and has yet to ratify the CEDAW.

Throughout its forty-year history, the Islamic Republic’s gender regime has been steadfastly patriarchal, a product of the political system, of the country’s pattern of economic development and growth, and of the repression of independent and dissident civil society organizations. Iran’s gender regime reflects the political and institutional make-up, consisting of a rather novel Shia Islam-influenced republican model devoid of conventional political parties. Although Iran is governed by an elected president and a 290-member parliament, two key institutions are both unelected and  powerful.

The Supreme Leader or Rahbar—originally, Ayatollah Khomeini, and after his death, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—is meant to be the nation’s spiritual guide but in fact is the country’s leading political leader. The twelve-man Guardian Council—tasked with ensuring that laws, policies, and elections adhere to both constitutional and Islamic norms—frequently has clashed with parliament over legislative bills and its veto of candidates for presidential elections. As for the judiciary, in practice it has tended to be very conservative (much like the Guardian Council itself) and opposed to reform initiatives. The 1987 ban on political parties was lifted in 1998, but political analyst Mehrzad Boroujerdi regards many modern political parties as little more than “professional groupings engaged in political ventures rather than full-fledged groups of full-time activities.”

As such, Iran’s political system lacks the features that are favorable to women’s “descriptive representation”—a proportional representation system with the presence of left-wing parties, along with quota adoption. Moreover, as a constitutional body that vets candidates and must approve parliamentary bills, the Council of Guardians prevents those it deems not sufficiently loyal from accessing political power and often blocks progressive legislation.

Challenging the Gender Regime
The reformist cleric Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 and again in 2017, and he promised to appoint more women to government posts. But as of April 2018, Rouhani has not carried out his promise to women. His inability to improve the economic situation, including unemployment, the high cost of living, and ever-widening income inequality, may have generated the nationwide protests between December 28, 2017 and January 5, 2018.

On the positive side, women are a strong presence in public spaces and segregation is not nearly as strict as, for example, in Saudi Arabia. Iranian women’s presence in public spaces takes the form not only of women walking, driving, shopping, and working but also taking part in public protests (where possible) and petition campaigns. Their involvement in the public sphere includes the growth of women’s websites and blogs as well as national debates and discussions about women’s rights and legal reform. A youth subculture includes holding parties, playing music, dancing, and defying the dress code. Indeed, there have been consistent female challenges to hijab strictures, most recently with the “My Stealthy Freedom” Facebook campaign, which began in 2015. The current national debate on ending compulsory hijab is indicative of the power of women’s public presence.

Domestically, the Iranian state faces high unemployment and income inequality. Externally, it is subjected to harsh sanctions and to the hostility of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. One strategy to improve its domestic and international prospects is to ensure its citizens’ wellbeing and sense of dignity, while also strengthening the economy and labor markets. Drawing on the creativity, expertise, and productivity of Iran’s female citizens will be an essential part of the strategy. But first, the state needs to remove unfair and discriminatory legislation and create a more welcoming institutional environment for women’s participation. Increasing the proportion of the female teaching staff at the university level from the current 20 percent, and creating decent job opportunities in public and private services for women with secondary schooling will enable more women to empower themselves while also contributing to economic growth. The transition to a “modern” and women-friendly gender regime will be a source of national strength and resilience as well as the foundation of women’s economic and political empowerment.

Valentine M. Moghadam is professor of sociology and international affairs and director of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at Northeastern University. Previously, she was director of Women’s Studies at Purdue University and Illinois State University, and section chief for gender equality and development at UNESCO in Paris (2004–06). From 1990 to 1995 she served as a senior research fellow at the WIDER Institute of the United Nations University, in Helsinki. She is author of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East and Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement. She was awarded the Victoria Schuck Award for best book on women and politics for Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks.

In March last year, among the throngs of young people and families that gather on the wide seafront promenade of Lebanon’s capital city, Beirut, thirty-one white dresses hung suspended in the air. Activists had placed them there as a stark visual reminder of each day of the month that a woman could be compelled to marry her rapist under Article 522 of the Lebanese penal code. It was just one of the tactics used by Abaad MENA, a women’s rights group in Lebanon, in their campaign against the law, which absolved a rapist of his crime if he married his victim. Billboard ads, flash mobs, street performances, and a powerful social media campaign using the slogan “A White Dress Doesn’t Cover Rape” and hashtag #Undress522 drew public attention to the law and helped to bring about its end: it was repealed by the Lebanese government last August.

Last year’s controversy in Lebanon is just one example of the intense conflict over women’s bodies and sexuality that’s unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the wake of the Arab Spring. In the protest movements that exploded across the region, women marched alongside men, demanding greater personal freedoms and claiming their rights as citizens. Chief among these was a demand for greater sexual rights and an end to the discriminatory laws that curtailed them. The democratic reforms that have taken hold in some parts of the region, along with the rise of social media, have opened up greater space for women to express their views and build movements for change that challenge laws regulating sexuality and the patriarchal systems of power that they buttress. But the gains like those made in Lebanon last year are a victory in the long-running battle—not a symbol of sweeping change.

State Actions and Women’s Rights Post-Arab Spring
Despite the fall of regimes across the region, the laws and underlying attitudes that restrict women’s freedoms have continued to hold sway. Some argue that this is due to the continued and perhaps increasing influence of Salafist Islam across the region, but they ignore the fact that the control of women’s bodies and sexuality has been as much a tool for secular governments as religious ones and that deeply ingrained sexist attitudes predate the rise of Islamic conservatives in the region. While there are definite signs of progress, the persistence of these attitudes means that advancements in women’s sexual rights will happen through evolution, not revolution; slow and steady gains will be made through the persistent and vocal efforts of women as they educate their populations and pressure their governments for change.

In the early days of the Arab Spring, the great upheaval in the political order across the region and the unprecedented popular demand for personal freedoms seemed to herald a similar revolution in women’s rights and gender equality. Women were active participants, organizers, and even leaders in many of the uprisings throughout the region and demanded that gender equality be enshrined in any new political order that emerged. The protests themselves were an opportunity for men and women to challenge restrictive social norms around sex and gender, often through the simple act of mixing freely in public.

In Egypt, during the initial protests against the authoritarian Hosni Mubarak regime in Tahrir Square, women protested alongside men, defying their curfews and sleeping in shared tents, without any reported instances of violence or harassment. Similar stories played out across the protest movements in Yemen, Tunisia, and Syria as women’s rights groups rallied to ensure they would be represented, and women’s issues would be addressed in the national transitions that took place after the fall of various regimes. After the toppling of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen in 2012, women took up 30 percent of the seats in the National Dialogue Conference, which shepherded the political transition to democracy. The new constitution reserved 30 percent of the seats in the government for women and the minimum age of marriage was set at 18.

Yet, these initial gains for women have not led to the women’s rights revolution some hoped for, particularly when it comes to women’s sexual rights—their right to choose a sexual partner, when and how they want to have sex, and exercise control over their own bodies. In fact, in some countries the reverse has happened with women living under more oppressive regimes. Across the region, laws and cultural practices continue to restrict women’s freedom to express their sexuality, while seeming to condone sexual harassment and assault. The Middle East and North Africa still ranks as one of the worst regions in the world on measures of gender empowerment and equality, and the laws that govern women’s sexual rights reflect this. Regulations around premarital sex, sexual violence, and marital rights still fail to protect women from abuse and violations.

In Saudi Arabia, whose Salafist government was largely immune to the political upheaval that swept across the rest of the region, premarital sex can be punished by death, gender segregation in public is strictly enforced, and decisions on the choice of a husband are made by a woman’s legal male guardian. In nominally secular states like Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt, the rights of women within marriage are still governed by religious “personal status laws” that fail to adequately protect them against child marriage, marital rape, and domestic violence. These laws also give privilege to the rights of men in matters of divorce and child custody, and marital rape is still not recognized as a crime under Lebanese, Palestinian, or Saudi law.

Outside the bounds of marriage, a woman’s virginity must be preserved to safeguard her and her family’s reputation, and families, society, and the government take an active role in policing it. In the theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia, laws force women to cover their heads and restrict their movement in order to prevent them from becoming, in the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, “a tool of male sexual arousal.” Even in countries with secular governments women are subjected to humiliating virginity tests either in state-sanctioned medical facilities or within their immediate families. In 2011, female activists in Cairo were rounded up by the government as they protested the slow pace of political change and given virginity tests while held in prison. After one woman took the unprecedented step of suing for sexual assault, an Egyptian court ruled that conducting virginity tests on women in detention was “an illegal act and a violation of women’s rights and an assault on their dignity.” However, in March 2012, the only military doctor charged in the “virginity tests” trial was acquitted and, according to Human Rights Watch, the illegal practice is still used in Egyptian detention facilities. There have also been documented cases of virginity tests being carried out by governments in Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Jordan. In parts of the region families still practice dukhla, where a bloodstained sheet is displayed as proof of a woman’s virginity after her wedding night.

Despite the apparent drive to preserve women’s virginity and “protect” them from male advances, legally they are often left unprotected from sexual harassment and violence. The abolition of the “marry your rapist” law in Lebanon last year followed similar steps taken by Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt (1999), and Morocco (2014). However, this law is still in place in Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, and Palestine. A UN Women study carried out in Egypt in 2013 found that 99 percent of women said they had experienced unwelcome physical contact and, according to the Safe Streets Foundation, almost 99 percent of Yemeni women have experienced the same. Even in countries like Tunisia, where sexual harassment was criminalized in 2004, the Ministry of Women, Family, and Childhood reported in 2016 that 50 percent of women had experienced aggression in a public space.

The Slow Pace of Change
Commentators like Mona Eltahawy have argued that the slow pace of change in women’s rights is due to the persistent influence of an “Islamist hatred of women” which “burns brightly across the region—now more than ever.” It’s true that the rise of Islamist parties has often been accompanied by efforts to roll back women’s rights. In post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia, both the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda parties, in the name of Islam, threatened the rights of women that were enshrined in their largely secular constitutions. The Ennahda party in Tunisia initially tried to amend the constitution to allow for polygamy; abolish a law allowing children born outside of marriage to be registered under their mother’s last name; and add a provision stating that women play a complementary role to men in family life rather than being their equals. Many Islamist politicians claimed that they were pushing such legal changes in order to bring the laws of the country more in line with sharia judicial norms. But experts like feminist sociologist Fatima Mernissi dispute whether this conservative, patriarchal interpretation of sharia law is truly reflective of the dictates of Islam, pointing instead to the fact that political movements in the MENA region, both secular and religious, have sought to control women’s rights as a means of exercising political and social control.

Throughout the twentieth century, restraints on female sexuality have been used by those in power, or those seeking to gain it, as a way to enforce patriarchal systems of governance. At each stage in the political evolution of the MENA region, women’s bodies and sexuality were pawns in the greater political struggles taking place socially. As colonial powers sought to extend their control, national and religious political movements challenged them, and post-independence authoritarian regimes took hold. Colonial penal codes contained laws that allowed for the sexual assault of women. The “marry your rapist law” that was overturned in Lebanon last year is a relic of the French imperial legal code that still forms part of Lebanese legislation. Religious anti-colonial movements like the Muslim Brotherhood advocated for strict control of women’s sexuality, depicting Muslim female identity as the last sphere of control against the Western threat to their societies. Secular nationalist movements, while allowing women to  participate, defined women’s roles as mothers and bearers of the nation and constructed a nationalist morality for women’s sexuality in which the principal virtue was chastity.

The lack of rapid progress in the fight for greater sexual rights for women in the wake of the Arab Spring stems not simply from a rise in “Islamist hatred” but from the fact these patriarchal attitudes and movements have persisted, despite the sweeping political changes that have occurred. Women’s sexual rights have remained the focus of political and societal control and sexist attitudes are still prevalent across the region, regardless of country, religion or political system.

In a recent study carried out by Promundo and UN Women on the views of men and women in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, and Morocco on masculinities and gender, only one-quarter of men supported gender equality. Its authors stated that, “Too many men in the region continue to uphold norms that perpetuate violence against women or confine women to conventional roles.” Men act on traditional attitudes in ways that “cause harm to women, children, and themselves,” and many women in the region hold similar views. This comes alongside the findings of similar studies on attitudes to street harassment conducted in Egypt, which revealed a tendency among men and women to place the blame on women for attracting harassment.

New Opportunities, New Voices
However, even as these attitudes persist, it’s clear that the Arab Spring has opened up new opportunities for a growing number of women to openly voice their dissent. Across the region, women have begun to speak more openly about sex, sexual violence, and their sexual rights. Their continuing efforts to highlight violations and call for better protections of women are not going unnoticed. The protests that led to the abolition of the “marry your rapist” law in Lebanon last year are just one example of women challenging the status quo, often using social media to get their message out. Iranian women have filmed themselves burning their headscarves; Saudi women have sat behind the wheel of a car; the #mosquemetoo and #anakaman (Arabic for “me too”) hashtags have been used by women across the region to speak openly about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment.

Though full democratic reforms have not been implemented in most of the countries that took part in the Arab Spring, both secular and Islamist governments across the region have responded to the waves of popular protest with reforms of their own. Last year the Jordanian government toughened its stance on violence against women, amending an article in its penal code that granted lesser penalties for “fits of fury,” or honor killings. This year, Saudi Arabia abolished its ban on women driving. In July 2014, Egypt passed a law criminalizing sexual harassment and assault and, that same year, sentenced seven men to life imprisonment for sexual assault.

Tunisia—where a democratic government has been established with a ruling coalition between the secular Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda party—has made significant advancements. Women make up 33 percent of the newly elected parliament and these Tunisian female parliamentarians have used their political clout to push for greater protection of women from sexual harassment and violence. In July 2017, the Tunisian parliament passed a comprehensive legislative package on violence against women. It contained tougher penalties for sexual violence against minors (including the removal of a “marry your rapist” provision), mandating compensation and follow-up support for survivors. Last year Tunisian Minister of Women, Family and Children Naziha Obeidi launched a campaign on violence against women and launched a 24-hour hotline for reporting incidents of violence.

A Gradual Shift toward Progress
It is clear that the political revolutions of the Arab Spring have not prompted a parallel sexual revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. Patriarchal laws and customs that limit women’s sexual rights and freedoms continue to exist in countries across the region and some have even seen a deterioration in women’s rights, especially when it comes to freedom from sexual violence and harassment. The persistence of these patriarchal attitudes, regardless of whether countries subscribe to an Islamist or secular form of government, means that advances in women’s sexual rights will be through, as author Shereen El Feki argues, a gradual evolution.

The move toward greater democracy and the positive changes in the laws that govern women’s sexual rights since the Arab Spring are a significant step forward. Yet, these changes were the result of decades of campaigning by women’s rights organizations, and there are still many challenges ahead. In Tunisia, now seen as a beacon of progress in the struggle for greater sexual and marriage rights for women, personal status laws in the country still deny women equal inheritance.

Real improvements in the lives of women will hinge on changing the underlying patriarchal attitudes and beliefs that are still widespread in the region. This will, inevitably, be a slow process and the result of persistent efforts by women over time to educate and pressure their societies—from the highest levels of leadership to grassroots communities. The importance of grassroots change was revealed in the Promundo/UN Women study: one of its key findings was that men whose mothers had a higher level of education and whose fathers carried out traditionally “feminine” household tasks were more likely to hold gender-equitable attitudes. The unprecedented level of civic dialogue that came out of the Arab Spring has given rise to a climate where women can mobilize in greater numbers than before and openly challenge these attitudes through protest, advocacy, and education. Arab women have boldly stepped into the public space, speaking out against violations of their rights, running programs that educate young people on safe sex, and engaging men in discussions around masculinity. These efforts will, no doubt, help to accelerate the pace of progress, but full gender equality and sexual rights will be the sum of many small gains over time, rather than one sweeping victory.

Odharnait Ansbro is a freelance journalist and education specialist covering issues affecting women across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Her work has been published in News Deeply and the Huffington Post. She has also worked on the design and delivery of education programs for the Lebanese government, USAID, and UNICEF. On Twitter: @odharnaitA.

The year 2011—the year of the Egyptian uprising—was a turning point in the history of Egypt, for both men and women. At the time, aspirations for a societal gender transformation were high. Seven years on, Egyptians continue to discuss the challenges, hurdles, opportunities, and occasional progress made toward increasing the rights and the role of women in Egypt. What have Egyptian women achieved? What challenges have they faced? And what can be done to further empower them in governing Egypt?

Ever since 2011, the government has been celebrating Egyptian women’s achievements and pointing out the prominent examples of empowered women in ministerial positions, in parliament, and as judges. Although this may be true for a handful of women who have managed to make it work, achieve an optimum life–work balance, and get their names mentioned in the newsreel often enough, it is not the case for the majority of women in Egypt. Women were active in the 2011 uprising—both out on the street, and later on as voters eager to have their voices heard—but have their aspirations been fully realized?

Rating the Indexes
Several international indexes and rankings exist that look into the degree of gender equality and inequality worldwide. In the Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) for 2017, an index prepared by the World Economic Forum to measure gender inequality gaps, we find that Egypt ranks 134 out of 144 countries worldwide.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Social Institutions and Gender (SIGI) 2014 index, that measures gender-based discrimination in social institutions, shows that Egypt was among the worst countries for discrimination against women.  The SIGI study classifies 108 countries into five categories; Egypt was within the 16 percent of countries that face a very high level of discrimination. Among the alarming features of this category was that that nearly one-third of girls were married before the age of nineteen, women had unfair inheritance rights, there was a high prevalence and acceptance of domestic violence, and women’s access to public space was exceedingly limited.

The 2016 UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII) measured gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development: reproductive health, empowerment, and economic status. The GII ranked Egypt 135 out of 159 countries. What may improve Egypt’s ranking is the current percentage of women occupying seats in parliament, which as of 2016 had risen to 15 percent from earlier levels of 2 percent. 

The general message from the international rankings seems to be quite gloomy. There is much that still needs to be done. Are we getting the same message from the local responsible authorities? I think not. What we hear in the media and in the news seems contrary to what is reported in the international community. The Egyptian president declared the year 2017 as the “Year of the Egyptian Woman,” and the Egyptian National Council of Women (NCW)—the only government body dedicated solely to addressing women’s issues—has declared repeated achievements for women in Egypt. Examples of the latest achievements by the NCW include the “Taa Marboota” campaign which has reached roughly 60 million Egyptians and aims to raise awareness about the importance of women’s participation in all spheres of life. Achievements also include the preparation of Egypt’s National Women’s Strategy 2030 to be in sync with Egypt’s National Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) 2030. Although Egypt’s SDS 2030 is currently being revised, the hope is that the National Women’s Strategy recently adopted by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi will be implemented soon. 

Toward Employment and Equality?
The Egyptian National Women’s Strategy 2030 envisions that by 2030, “Egyptian women will become active contributors to the achievement of sustainable development in a nation that guarantees their constitutional rights, ensures their full protection, and provides—without discrimination—political, social, and economic opportunities that enable them to develop their capacities and achieve their full potential.” This seems like a very optimistic vision statement that we all hope can be implemented one of these days for both men and women. 

The published strategy available on the NCW website clearly identifies the four main pillars for women’s empowerment and divides them into clear objectives. Each objective has matching clear key performance indicators, showing the current value and the targeted value in 2030. Additionally, a list of needed interventions and strategies show how each of the NCW’s overall goals can be achieved. 

This all looks well and good. What is lacking, however, is the clear indication of what funding and resources are available to implement, or coordinate the implementation of those initiatives and strategies from now, until 2030. And unless the budgeting and the lobbying process has been planned for, the plan will go nowhere and will remain as it is currently: ink on paper, or PowerPoint slides on the internet! 

The majority of the targets set by the NCW for 2030 are legitimate, and should be achieved soon, yet many of the goals are too optimistic. For example, the percentage of female illiteracy among Egyptian women aged 20 to 29 in 2014 was 12 percent, and the target of the NCW plan is zero percent in 2030. While it is an admirable goal, zero percent seems unlikely in twelve years—or even in twenty years. The percentage of employed women below the poverty line in 2015 was 36.3 percent, and the target for 2030 is 9 percent. Finally, the percentage of women parliamentarians in 2016 was 15 percent and the target in 2030 is an unlikely 35 percent. Again, these goals are to be lauded, however, in some ways, they may be difficult to achieve. 

To be able to reach these targets, the Egyptian government needs to spend more intensively on education and literacy. If more money is spent, Egyptian women will attain higher levels of social equity, which will result in a reduction of poverty rates for both men and women. Unfortunately, the challenges are daunting. There has been an increase in poverty rates which according to the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reached 27.8 percent in 2015 compared to 25.2 percent in 2010/2011. To make matters worse, the Egyptian government was forced in November 2016 to devalue the Egyptian pound by over half. A weakened pound hurts women’s and their family’s spending power, leaving it considerably weaker than it was before the late 2016 devaluation. 

According to World Bank figures, in 2017, the unemployment rate for Egyptian women stood at 25 percent, which was one of the highest women employment rates in the world. In parallel to the alarmingly high unemployment rate for Egyptian women was their low labor force participation rate that year. Women’s participation in the labor force is currently only 22 percent, which is considerably lower than the world average of 49 percent, although somewhat above the 21 average for countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Many reasons are given for the relatively low official rates of Egyptian women’s participation in the labor force, including the fact that many women work in the agricultural sector and in the informal sector and are not counted in official labor force statistics. Additionally, according to Egyptian economist Ragui Assaad, another contributing factor is the prevalent cultural norm that still considers the male to be the main breadwinner and finds no problem with women staying at home, being responsible for the household chores, and taking care of the children and older family members. 

Women in Government
There has been great progress for women in the upper echelons of state power. In 2013 there were three government ministers. Now, in 2018, there are six women leading the Ministries of Social Solidarity, Tourism, Culture, Investment and International Cooperation, Migration and Egyptian Expatriates, and finally, Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform. In parallel to the progress achieved on the national ministerial level by appointing six women ministers, President El-Sisi in February 2017 appointed for the first time a woman governor, Nadia Abdo for the governorate of Beheira. She is only one woman in a pool of twenty-seven governors, the majority of whom have police or military backgrounds. 

A look at lower-level female government employees presents, in some ways, a positive picture. The percentage of Egyptian female government employees was nearly 50 in 2012; the more recent 2015 employment figures indicate that the large proportion of women in government may be declining. In the mid-2000s, only 35 percent of female applicants found jobs in the public/government sector.

Egyptian women have historically preferred working in the public sector for several reasons. The security and benefits available are better in the public sector than in Egypt’s private and informal sectors. In the public sector, jobs are guaranteed for life and it is very difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to be fired. Working in the Egyptian public sector, a woman can get up to six years of unpaid childcare leave, two years at a time, for up to three children. She is also entitled to three months’ paid maternity leave and upon returning to work, she is permitted to leave one hour early to nurse her child for one year. If she wishes to accompany her spouse on travel to any place where he has a work contract, she may take an open-ended unpaid leave and still get promoted during that time. This does not happen in the private sector and certainly not in the informal sector. 

Government jobs are also perceived to be safe and respected jobs for women, compared to most jobs in the private and informal sectors. Parents and husbands of working women are more likely to approve women’s working in the public sector than in the private or informal sectors. In many poor and middle-class Egyptian families, there is a perception that women may be less prone to sexual harassment than in other sectors. This is based on the notion that in the private and informal sectors, there are usually fewer employees and women employees may need to spend time alone with male coworkers in closed work environments. This possible state of affairs certainly causes prejudice against private sector jobs for Egyptian women.

Women Parliamentarians
Since the uprising began on January 25, 2011, Egypt has gone through a very turbulent political period with several changes in presidents, prime ministers, and parliaments. Never before, over such a short period of time, have Egyptians been asked to go to the polls as frequently, for parliamentary elections, referenda, or presidential elections. 

During the early days of the uprising, women were active politically, whether as vocal demonstrators or as voters making up nearly 50 percent of the voting population. They were less forthcoming in running for public office, however. This is not surprising as many Egyptian women have limited confidence in their abilities, as well as in the abilities of other women, to be effective parliamentarians. In an earlier study on Egyptian women’s participation in the 2012 elections, among those who reported that there were women candidates in their districts, just 41 percent said they had voted for them. This means that women did not automatically vote for female candidates. 

When asked to evaluate the performance of women parliamentarians before and after the uprising, more than 70 percent of Egyptian women stated that the performance of women members of parliament was ineffective. When women were asked to name the main challenges to women winning parliamentary seats, the most significant responses were: cultural barriers, lack of qualifications and experience, need for funding, corrupt and unfair elections, and lack of free time.

Historically, women have not had strong representation in the Egyptian parliament. Over the years, quotas to encourage their participation have been instituted, abolished, and reinstated. After the 2011 uprising, the quota was nullified for the 2012 parliament and women’s representation was confined to 2 percent. However, in the 2015 parliament, a quota was once again reinstated, and in the 2015 parliamentary elections, women reached their historical high in terms of numerical representation, accounting for 14.9 percent of the total available seats. Reflecting the quota requirements, 75 women were elected out of 568 members. Fourteen more women were appointed by virtue of a presidential decree, thus bringing the total number of female members to 89, or 16 percent. 

Women candidates found it much easier to run as candidates on party lists, than as individuals. They lacked the confidence, the resources, and the societal support to enable them to consider individual nomination for parliament. 

In terms of numbers, female representation in parliament has currently improved and Egyptian women have achieved an unprecedented percentage of representation. The number of women representatives in parliament matters. While it is not the only factor, having more female parliamentarians is one way to ensure diversity and inclusivity and to be certain that women empower themselves through legal means. Also, the equal participation of men and women on matters of public concern is a main pillar of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). As such, equality of political representation is an issue of rights and justice before anything else. 

The question remains, however, about the quality of Egyptian women’s performance in parliament, which is connected to how well the female and the male parliamentarians work together in Egypt. In evaluating the work of parliamentarians in general and Egyptian women parliamentarians in particular, we must remember that voter turnout was quite low for the most recent parliamentary elections in 2015; not exceeding 26.5 percent in total. Since the 2015 elections the Egyptian parliament has passed some restrictive measures. Is there a connection then between voter apathy and state security-focused legislation? In general, following the 2015 election, political opposition and political parties have grown weaker as has the media sector. 

Advocating for Civil Society
Before the 2011 uprising, advocacy for women’s rights was mostly dominated by the first ladies of Egypt: Jehan Sadat (1970–81) or later Suzanne Mubarak (1981–2011). Sadat worked on several issues of importance to women. She was a strong advocate of a new family law, later referred to as “Jehan’s Law,” that gave women more rights including those related to alimony and custody of children in the event of divorce. Mubarak was known for her efforts in establishing two important government institutions, namely the NCW and the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM). The NCCM was established in 1988 and the NCW in 2000, by presidential decree. 

Starting in 2011 some non-state affiliated women’s rights organizations became more vocal. Women’s traditional organizations, plus new evolving movements and coalitions led by younger women, started using non-conventional means, including social media, to mobilize and rally support for women’s rights. In June 2011, the Alliance for Arab Women and the Egyptian Women’s Coalitions were reported by the UN Women to collect half a million women’s signatures for a charter demanding that Egypt become more inclusive for women and that the Egyptian government support CEDAW.

Advocating for women’s rights, however, is not easy. In a country where citizens’ rights are many times violated, some argue that women’s rights should not be considered separate from the larger struggle for human rights. Following the uprising, new public space was created and women used this new space to advocate for their rights. However, since 2015 this public space has been shrinking while advocacy for women’s issues takes place mostly through state-affiliated or approved institutions and bodies. Meanwhile, most Egyptian political parties are in a state of “stagnation.”  

Amid the evolving political, economic, social, and cultural landscape, women have faced significant challenges in their pursuit of public engagement. Closing the gender gap is not going to be an easy task. Persistence in calling for women’s rights is a key prerequisite to success. Additionally, the more educated women become, the more capable they will be of participating in public service, finding better work opportunities, and taking on leadership positions. Women should also have more confidence in their abilities and not allow negative societal or cultural values to hold them back. We may concede that some progress has been achieved by Egyptian women in living and governing their country, but in terms of the quality of women’s participation and impact, Egypt still has a long way to go.

This article is based on previously researched and/or published work by the author.

Laila El Baradei is associate dean for graduate studies and research at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP) and professor of public administration at the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo. She was the acting dean for the School of GAPP during the academic year 2013/2014. She previously served for more than fourteen years as a faculty member at Cairo University. She was a contributing author to the Egypt Human Development Report in 2004, 2008, and 2010, the Millennium Development Goals Second Country Report for Egypt in 2004, and the World Bank Country Environmental Analysis for Egypt in 2005. She contributes regularly to the Cairo Review. On Twitter: @Egyptianwoman.

The statements of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his foreign minister Sameh Shoukry have often reflected a pessimistic view of the Middle East and North Africa. To them, the region is rife with chaos, instability, bloody conflicts, and protracted crises, and its countries face existential threats. In an interview with the Saudi newspaper Okaz in October 2014, El-Sisi blamed this state of affairs in the region on what he called “creative chaos” resulting from “certain parties” attempting to fragment and rearrange the region, and unaware of the gravity of the consequences of their actions. In El-Sisi’s view, these parties mistakenly thought that the establishment of a new regional system would give them the opportunity to play a leading role in the region. The result was civil wars, sectarian conflicts, lost potential with people in the region paying the price. Today we have no regional system.

Given the obvious chaos in the region and its protracted conflicts, Egypt’s approach to regional crises has been one of caution, advocating political settlements while avoiding any military involvement that could drag the country into conflict. For example, in 2015, Egypt participated in Operation Decisive Storm—a military intervention by a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Morocco, Sudan, Jordan, and Pakistan against Houthi factions in Yemen. However, Egypt announced that its participation in the operation was limited only to air and naval forces—stressing the absence of land forces—with the main goal of safeguarding free navigation through the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab Strait. 

Egypt also used its air force in limited and surgical operations against terrorist groups in Libya. For example, in May 2017, Egyptian fighter jets launched strikes targeting camps in the Libyan city of Derna, where, Cairo had determined, militants who killed dozens of Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery in southern Egypt were trained.

The State Is the Solution
According to Egyptian officials, collapsed and weak states have contributed to regional chaos. Therefore, the only possible way out of the crises in the Middle East is through the restoration of the state and its institutions. El-Sisi has emphasized this state-centric solution for several regional conflicts, particularly what he described as attempts at division and fragmentation for ethnic or sectarian reasons. For example, a resolution to the crisis in Syria should, above all, aim to preserve the unity of the Syrian state, and to maintain its institutions.

Likewise, there is no solution in Libya except in the framework of a political settlement, which restores the state’s institutions, and confronts attempts to fragment the state and turn the country into a hotbed of tribal conflicts. Egypt has also announced its support for efforts to achieve unity in Yemen, protect its territorial integrity, and restore its legitimate government. “Any reform,” the Egyptian president asserted, “must pass inevitably through the nation-state, and cannot be built on its demise.” 

Egypt also expressed deep concerns about the possible secession of Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq in the wake of the referendum on independence which took place on September 25, 2017. The Egyptian foreign ministry urged all parties to exercise self-restraint and steer clear of unilateral measures that could complicate the situation, destabilize Iraq, and encourage a climate of chaos and tension in the region.

Moreover, in Egypt’s view, national armies are key players in preserving the state. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in November 2017, El-Sisi summed up his position by emphasizing his rejection of armed militias that plunge disintegrated nations into endless wars. On the other hand, he reiterated his support for both the Syrian and Libyan national armies in an interview with the Portuguese channel, RTP. When asked if he would send Egyptian peacekeepers to Syria under a peace deal, he replied that it is better that the national army take responsibility and that his priority is to support the national army of Syria. Consequently, Egypt sees no place for non-state actors such as militias or terrorist groups in the resolution of regional conflicts. El-Sisi called for the dismantling of these groups rather than integrating them in the state.

A Partner, not a Leader
In a major departure from its decades-long rhetoric about regional leadership, Shoukry announced before a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Egyptian Parliament on May 5, 2016, that “Egypt is not seeking leadership (riadah), and we do not want to be a leader of anyone….We want to be partners, in a way that preserves common interests.”

Egypt gave priority to forging a partnership with the Arab Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. El-Sisi stressed that the security of the Arab Gulf is an integral part of Egypt’s security, and threats to Gulf security would be a red line for Egypt. He also described the relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as “deep and strategic,” and serving the interests of the three countries and Arab national security as a whole.

This trilateral partnership has been active on several regional issues such as Libya, Yemen, and the Palestinian reconciliation. Egypt has also joined Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain in boycotting Qatar. The four states accused Qatari authorities of supporting and financing terrorism, harboring extremists, spreading hatred, and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

In this context, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have forged closer ties since the ouster of former president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. On several occasions, El-Sisi has asserted that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the two wings of Arab national security.

The military and strategic cooperation between the two countries reached unprecedented levels in the era of King Salman Al-Saud and El-Sisi. During the Saudi monarch’s visit to Egypt in 2016, both countries signed several agreements, including the settlement of a maritime border dispute over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, and the building of a bridge that would link the two countries across the Red Sea. In March 2018, Saudi Arabia and Egypt extended their economic cooperation by agreeing to develop a business zone that would span the border between the two countries. A $10 billion investment fund would be set up to develop the zone, with Egypt providing a long-term lease on the land in the south of the Sinai region where part of the project would be built.

Military cooperation has also intensified between the two countries. On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia announced the launch of a military alliance with the participation of Egypt, Gulf, Arab, and Islamic countries to support Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi against Houthi militias. Egypt also joined the Islamic military alliance established by Riyadh to counter terrorism. In February 2016, Egypt joined Saudi Arabia in a massive military exercise which included troops from 20 nations, dubbed North Thunder, and took place in northeastern Saudi Arabia. In March 2018, the Egyptian Armed Forces participated in Gulf Shield-1 joint drills, also taking place in Saudi Arabia.

At the bilateral level, military forces from both nations participated in several joint exercises, involving the army, navy and air force. For example, Egyptian Armed Forces also participated in the joint military exercises Tabouk-3 in western Saudi Arabia. The navy from both countries participated in Morgan-14 and Morgan-15 in the Red Sea in 2013 and 2015; and in 2017, the Egyptian and Saudi air forces participated in Faisal-2017, hosted by Egypt, which marked the eleventh edition of the joint air force training between the two countries.

Counter-terrorism as a Regional Priority
Countering terrorism has become a foreign policy priority for Egypt. El-Sisi declared that it was impossible to envisage a future for a regional order without a definitive and comprehensive confrontation with terrorism. He linked the rise of terrorist organizations to the disintegration and instability of state institutions in the Arab region, and what he described as the systematic attempts to drag the region into a “destructive vacuum.” He also stressed the importance of resolving the Palestinian issue via a just, comprehensive, and final settlement based on the two-state framework. El-Sisi believes that settling the Palestinian issue will eliminate a major pretext used by terrorists to justify their crimes.

In his speech before the Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, El-Sisi called for a holistic approach to counter terrorism that encompasses political, ideological, and developmental aspects. He offered four elements to end terrorist activity in the Middle East and North Africa. First, states and militaries must confront all terrorist organizations without discrimination, instead of limiting confrontation to one or two organizations, as all terrorist organizations are interconnected through ideology and funding, as well as military, security, and information sharing. Second, a comprehensive confrontation with terrorism must address all dimensions of this phenomenon, including funding, arming, as well as political and ideological support. The third element of battling terror is the termination of the terrorist organizations’ ability to recruit new fighters at both the ideological and intellectual levels, with special emphasis on renewing religious discourse. Finally, states must fill the vacuum where terrorism grows. This requires exerting every effort to restore and reinforce the unity, independence, and efficiency of state institutions in the Arab region.

In this vein, Egypt has accused regional powers of supporting and financing terrorist organizations, called for the establishment of a joint Arab military force to combat terrorism, and taken its war on terrorism to neighboring Libya with airstrikes on targets in 2015 and 2017.

El-Sisi continues to believe that military force is an important tool in combating terrorism. In the aftermath of the terror attack at Al-Rawda mosque in North Sinai in November 2017, which claimed the lives of 305 civilians, he ordered the Egyptian military to use “brute force” against terrorists. He also believes that the war on terrorism should have a regional military dimension, a priority that has become more urgent as the region faces the threat of terrorism. Arab leaders agreed to the principle of a joint Arab military force during a summit meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh in March 2015. However, the force has failed to materialize due to disagreements on the size, leadership, and goals which would make up this kind of joint military structure.

Outside Help Is Welcome
Though Egypt has frequently rejected all instances of interference in the internal affairs of the region’s countries, it has welcomed outside help in resolving regional conflicts. Egypt believes that leaving conflicts to regional powers alone will further complicate rather than solve them. In an interview with CNBC in November 2017, El-Sisi accepted that outside powers such as the United States and Russia will be active in developing diplomatic initiatives in the region. El-Sisi emphasized that when there is no dialogue or understanding between regional and outside powers, the result is a loss of stability in the Middle East.

For example, while Egypt criticized Turkish and Iranian involvement in Syria, El-Sisi’s government called for a joint Russian–American effort to resolve the crisis, and backed the negotiations sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva. Egypt also supported the Russian initiative to establish de-escalation zones in Syria and on July 31, 2017, Cairo hosted negotiations between representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry and moderate Syrian opposition. An agreement related to a third de-escalation zone in Syria, north of the city of Homs, was reached at the Cairo meeting. Egypt also attended the second round of the Astana talks on Syria, sponsored by Russia on January 23, 2017, and brokered a ceasefire agreement on Eastern Ghouta between Al-Ghad opposition movement and the Syrian government. The signing of the agreement came after three days of negotiations in the presence of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian government, and the Russian Defense Ministry.

Following the election of Donald Trump as president, Egypt welcomed renewed American interest in the region. El-Sisi believed that the United States has regained its weight and role in preserving the security of the region, and expressed his appreciation for what he described as the insightful vision of Trump, who has proposed since assuming office a robust antiterrorism policy.

After Egypt successfully concluded a ceasefire agreement between the Syrian government and the Al-Ghad opposition movement, Al- Ghad Chairperson Ahmed Jarba held a press conference in Cairo, in which he cited the reasons for choosing Egypt as mediator. The first was that Egypt had not been involved in any conflict with the Syrian parties, nor had it backed any armed Syrian faction. Secondly, Egypt has good relations with Russia, a co-sponsor of the ceasefire. And third, Egypt’s role was confined to only being a mediator. The previous statement illustrates how Egypt has been able to become a regional player once more. Egypt’s conviction that there should be no military solutions to the ongoing conflicts in the region and Egypt’s advocacy of political settlements based on the preservation of state unity and territorial integrity as well as its relationship with key parties of regional conflicts have provided opportunities for Egypt to reactivate its regional role.

In addition to its mediation in the Syrian crisis, Egypt has played a key role in attempts to find a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Libya. Cairo hosted several meetings that were attended by representatives from Libya’s numerous factions to discuss the details of a political settlement to the conflict. In August 2016, and to emphasize the importance of the Libyan question to Egypt, El-Sisi appointed General Mahmoud Hegazy, then the armed forces chief of staff, to be the head of the Egyptian Committee on Libya.

Egypt continued to support General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), but it also reached out to Libya’s Presidency Council (PC) leader, Fayez Al-Sarraj, and mediated between the two adversaries during their visit to Cairo in February 2017. Egypt also proposed an initiative to unite the Libyan army, which won the praise of many factions in Libya. Moreover, Egypt worked with Tunisia and Algeria in an attempt to reach an accord among all Libyan parties.

Egypt also renewed its efforts to achieve a Palestinian reconciliation between the rival factions Hamas and Fatah. On October 12, 2017, the two factions signed a reconciliation deal in Cairo brokered by Egypt. The El-Sisi administration also helped in easing tensions between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and facilitating the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Beirut after he announced his resignation from Saudi Arabia on November 4, 2017.

Challenges of a Regional Role
With these successes, Egypt’s regional role has also faced several challenges. The first is domestic preoccupations. Egypt continues to be confronted with significant domestic challenges, including a rapidly increasing population, an economy still in the process of a slow rebound, and the continuation of the security challenges in the Sinai Peninsula and Western Desert. The Egyptian leadership’s priorities and preoccupation over these domestic challenges have constrained the willingness and ability of Egypt to pursue an ambitious regional role.

Another constraint relates to disagreement on some regional issues between Egypt and its Arab partners, notably Saudi Arabia. For example, while Saudi Arabia demanded the departure of Bashar Al-Assad of Syria as a precondition for resolving the Syrian crisis, Egypt considered the Syrian president part of the solution, and was in favor of him remaining in power for fear that his removal might hasten the collapse of the state and turn Syria into a hotbed for terrorist activity. Saudi Arabia criticized Egypt for supporting a Russian proposal for a truce in Syria at the UN in October 10, 2016. Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Al-Mouallimi described Egypt’s support for the Russian draft resolution as “painful,” and Saudi Arabia punished Egypt by temporarily halting its supply of oil to the country.

Cairo has also taken a different line on Iran. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt does not consider Iran the primary threat in the region. Egypt criticized Iran’s interference in Arab internal affairs and pledged support for Saudi Arabia. El-Sisi, however, stressed the importance of de-escalation. He was against military strikes on Iran or the Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, adding that there was enough turmoil in the Middle East. Egypt was also less skeptical than Saudi Arabia of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, and expressed hope that the deal would offer a new opportunity to creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Another point of contention was the Egyptian proposal to establish a joint Arab military force, over which Saudi Arabia had reservations. Ultimately the proposal was shelved due to disagreement over the size of the force, its leadership, and goals.

However, several indicators have recently shown that the gap of disagreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia has been bridged. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman recently described the Muslim Brotherhood group as an incubator for terrorists. Also, the crown prince said Egypt was a part of what he described as an alliance of moderate states that included Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman. This alliance stands against what Salman calls the “axis of evil,” consisting of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sunni terror groups.

Egypt Charts Troubled Waters
Egypt’s regional role has been influenced by its view of the Middle East as a chaotic region. El-Sisi’s government gives great import to security measures and the integrity of states across the Middle East and North Africa. Essentially, the administration is opposed to radical Islamist terrorist networks as these institutions inherently seek to destroy the nation state. To these ends Egypt has put emphasis on political settlement of regional crises aimed at restoring the state and its institutions. Egypt has also worked in partnership with the Gulf Arab countries.

El-Sisi has put Egypt on a new path in that it is now a champion of state security and antiterrorist activities across the Middle East and North Africa region. This will likely be the trajectory of Egyptian policy in the Middle East for many years to come.

Mohamed Kamal is professor of political science and director of the Center of International Area Studies at Cairo University. He also served as director of American Studies Center at Cairo University, and has taught at the American University in Cairo. In 2012 he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago (2012–13). He has several publications in Arabic and English, including the following books: European Decision-Making Process and Euro-Arab Relations; Globalization or Americanization: The Arab World and the New International System; and The International Political Economy of American Foreign Aid to the Middle East.

With the reelection of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi to a second term, a new chapter in Egypt’s foreign policy will be written. El-Sisi was elected after two popular uprisings—the first being on the January 25, 2011 against Hosni Mubarak, and the second on June 30, 2013 against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi—in the span of two years. The president’s first term lasted between June 2014 and June 2018 before winning a second election in April.

Although it is logical to anticipate that Egypt during the president’s second term will continue to experience a certain degree of internal and external stability, it is also expected that there will be some foreign policy changes. These changes will stem from the urgency in dealing with Egypt’s economic problems, which grow more tiresome every day.

A Steady and Stable Foreign Policy under Mubarak
To better understand Egypt’s current foreign policy and what is expected from it in the near and medium future, it is useful to review the state of Egypt’s foreign policy before El-Sisi’s first term. The Mubarak era during its thirty-year rule (1981–2011) had become stagnant, comparable to the last days of Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union. Though Mubarak was accused by his critics of being corrupt and authoritarian, when it came to foreign policy Mubarak was credited by many for preserving some of the basic tenets of Egyptian national interests and security.

The successful completion of the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai in 1982 despite the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat counts as Mubarak’s first achievement. This was followed by ending of Egypt’s isolation in the Arab World by restoring relations with Arab capitals and ending the Arab boycott after the Camp David peace accords. In the long view, Mubarak also succeeded in projecting Egypt as the main mediator on behalf of the Palestinians with Israel, while at the same time keeping a “cold peace” with Israel.

Yet, the most prominent aspect of Mubarak’s foreign policy was the special relationship he personally cultivated with the Arab Gulf countries. One example of this relationship was the solidarity Egypt displayed with the Gulf monarchies and especially Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War (1990–91). Egypt under Mubarak was instrumental in mobilizing the Arab League to condemn the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Egypt also worked throughout the Mubarak presidency to further military and economic relations between the Gulf and Egypt.

Mubarak also cultivated and maintained a “special relationship” with Washington, and as a result benefitted from U.S. military and economic assistance throughout his three-decade rule. At times, there were some strains in U.S.–Egypt relations over Egyptian domestic issues related to human rights and the role of civil society. An issue which soured the relationship at the end of Mubarak’s presidency was the latter’s refusal to allow openness and democracy in the country after George W. Bush announced a campaign to bring democratic freedom to the Arab World.

As for relations with Moscow, they were not antagonistic, as was the case with Sadat. Mubarak re-established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1984, three years after Sadat had severed them. Russian President Vladimir Putin was invited to Cairo in 2005, and in 2008 during Mubarak’s visit to Moscow, he enlisted Russian support to build a nuclear power plant in Egypt. Cooperation between the two countries extended to other areas such as tourism, where the flow of Russian tourists to Sharm El-Sheikh and other resort cities on the Red Sea was notable. Thus, Russian tourists formed the largest nationality to visit Egypt in terms of numbers, reaching more than 2.5 million per year by the end of Mubarak’s presidency.

Mubarak also intensified economic ties with the European Union (EU), which emerged as Egypt’s largest trading partner. While in many ways Egypt succeeded in improving its trade relationship with the EU, issues of human rights surfaced from time to time and hindered reaching full agreements on the type of association that would have benefitted both parties. 

In short, one can describe Mubarak’s period as both steady and stable, not ambitious but rather more pragmatic. Yet the final years of Mubarak’s presidency saw a deterioration in his standing domestically and diplomatically. Opposition to Mubarak grew especially after the parliamentary elections of 2010 and after the standard of living among the majority of Egyptians declined. In addition to these internal factors, Egyptians were nostalgic for the times of Nasser’s rule when Cairo was the center of the Arab World and played a leading role in the region.

Also in 2010 Ethiopia announced plans to build what has come to be called the Renaissance Dam. Ethiopia’s plan exposed Egypt’s inability and weakness to confront this new challenge. Furthermore, with the events of January 2011, U.S.–Egyptian relations came to their lowest point when former President Barack Obama asked Mubarak directly to step down and accept the end of his rule.

The January 25 uprising unleashed a wave of popular optimism in Egypt and the Arab World. Many in Egypt dreamed that Cairo would become the new model of democracy in the region. This perception was encouraged by both Brussels and Washington, who sought to support Western-style democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Interestingly during this revolutionary moment, Western democracies supported an importation of the “Duval Initiative” to Egypt and the Arab World—an initiative which had begun initially in the 1980s and 1990s to support democratization across Eastern Europe. However, during and right after the January 25 uprising, Egypt was too embroiled in its own domestic politics and turmoil to take advantage of this initiative or other forms of external assistance.

The non-Western reaction to the Arab Spring tended to be one of “wait and see.” Some nations and leaders harbored deep suspicions, which turned to negative attitudes, though not open hostility.

Negativity toward the Arab Spring was seen most notably from the conservative Arab Gulf and the Russian Federation. The election of Morsi—a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization—to the presidency of Egypt in June 2012 did not bring the desired stability needed for the country. Instead, Morsi’s rule ushered in a new period of turmoil for Egypt.

The Brotherhood’s Failure
The challenges facing Egypt, whether domestic or external, became more acute and compelling as the new Morsi regime quickly proved its ineptitude. When it came to foreign issues such as the Nile water crisis with Ethiopia, a televised diplomatic blunder resulted in the Ethiopian government downgrading all relations with the Morsi regime. Morsi was seen conferring with his advisors on resorting to military force to deal with the threat posed by the Renaissance Dam.

Another example of Morsi’s poor leadership was evident in his attempt to secure a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF and subsequently in his failure to conclude the loan by proceeding with some necessary reforms.

As for the relationship with the United States, the Obama administration supported the revolution and the election of an Islamist president, in the belief that having a moderate Islamic regime in Egypt, as in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would best serve American interests in the region. Yet in spite of this support, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to further advance U.S.–Egypt relations. In fact, Obama himself described his government’s relationship with Egypt under Morsi as “neither friend nor an enemy.” This was a far cry from the “special relationship” which U.S. and Egyptian leaders had enjoyed during most of Mubarak’s presidency.

The Morsi regime did not understand the fundamental changes that had happened in society leading up to the January 25 uprising. The November 2012 Constitutional Declaration—in which Morsi gave himself more draconian powers than had ever been enjoyed by Mubarak—was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After November 2012, it was only a matter of time before the onset of a second uprising. It came on June 30 of the following year.

El-Sisi’s First Years
After ending Morsi’s rule on July 3, 2013, El-Sisi, then serving as Minister of Defense, was called on to restore law and order to the country and bring a degree of political stability, while at the same time confront a nascent terrorist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. But that was not all. El-Sisi was also confronted with the problem of legitimacy and international recognition.

In the eyes of the African Union and Western democracies such as the United States and the European Union, the army’s intervention on July 3, 2013 was seen in a different light than on February 11, 2011. In contrast to when the Egyptian military had intervened to end Mubarak’s rule—to the acclaim of most observers inside and outside of Egypt—the military’s same action two and a half years later on July 3, 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood was decried by some international powers as a coup d’état. Yet it is important to remember that the protests which rocked Egypt starting June 30, 2013 were considerably larger and more diverse than the January 25 protests had ever been. More Egyptians mobilized against the Morsi regime than those who had protested Mubarak. The June 30, 2013 protests also had the support of most of the civilian opposition including Mohamed ElBaradei as well as religious institutions like Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church. Despite the overwhelming popular support for the overthrow of the Brotherhood regime, some nations downgraded their diplomatic relations with Egypt in the run up to El-Sisi’s inauguration as president.

For Obama, it was problematic to continue providing Egypt with its annual military and economic aid package because U.S. legislation prohibits assistance to any country whose democratically elected head of state has been deposed by a military coup. While the Obama administration did not use the term “military coup” to describe what happened in Egypt in the summer of 2013, it justified its halting the delivery of certain weapons that had been previously contracted such as F-16 jet fighters and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, due to the removal of the Morsi regime. The Obama administration also cancelled joint military exercises between the Egyptian and U.S. militaries following El-Sisi’s rise to power.

However, it took the Obama administration only two weeks after the election of El-Sisi in May 2014 to release $575 million in military aid as well as to deliver the pre-ordered F-16s and AH-65s. Despite that, U.S.–Egypt relations remained cool throughout the rest of the Obama presidency. Cairo did not like the tone of the administration in criticizing what Washington saw as human rights violations and the suppression of civil society in Egypt. Most important to Cairo was that El-Sisi felt the Obama administration did not adopt a firm stance against the Muslim Brotherhood and refused to designate the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Because of these cool relations, El-Sisi was not invited to the White House until November 2017, and it was not Obama, but Obama’s successor President Donald Trump who extended the invitation to El-Sisi.

With the election of Trump, many in Egypt hoped for better relations with the United States. To that end Trump and El-Sisi had a productive meeting during El-Sisi’s visit to Washington in April 2017 as both leaders showered each other with compliments and praise.

Yet, such good feelings proved to be ephemeral. Four months later, in August 2017, the U.S. Congress cut about $100 million from U.S. economic aid to Egypt and delayed about $200 million in military financing pending improvements in human rights conditions. To make matters worse, in December 2017 Trump’s infamous decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there dissipated much of the remaining goodwill from El-Sisi’s April visit. It is unclear whether El-Sisi’s second term will see an improvement in relations between Washington and Cairo. Yet, if more policies similar to the Jerusalem decision come from Trump’s White House, public opinion and the mass media in Egypt will pressure El-Sisi to distance Cairo from Washington. Much of the future relations between Egypt and the United States thus may depend on the diplomatic interactions between Egypt, Palestine, the United States, and Israel.

In stark contrast to relations with the United States, the bond between Egypt and Russia from 2013 onward became increasingly warm. This close relationship between El-Sisi and Putin grew out of the events of the Arab Spring and the chaos of the Morsi regime. Despite the fact that Mubarak was not regarded as a close friend of Moscow, the Russian state had a different reaction than the American administration to the January 25 uprising. Moscow was not comfortable with the fall of Mubarak and was deeply suspicious of any popular movements. Russian leaders depicted the Egyptian January 25 uprising as an extension of the revolutions which had swept the countries of Eastern Europe in 1989 and accelerated the demise of the Soviet state.

The 2012 election of Morsi and the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt was met with more caution and trepidation in Moscow. While Russian planners knew that Egypt was not Iran, a Sunni Islamist-ruled Egypt spiked fears in Moscow that Morsi’s regime could sympathize with—if not outright support— Islamist terrorists in Chechnya. With that background in mind, one can understand the enthusiasm with which El-Sisi was received on his first visit to Russia after the overthrow of Morsi in February 2014—though at the time El-Sisi was still just the Minister of Defense. On that visit, Moscow accorded El-Sisi a much better reception than what is normally given to a visiting government minister. It was quite obvious at the time that the Russians had made up their minds and decided to back El-Sisi.

Several arms deals worth billions of dollars have been signed between Russia and Egypt during El-Sisi’s presidency, including the purchase of 50 MiG-29 fighter jets. The previous joint committee for dialogue and consultations established earlier under Mubarak known as the “two plus two mechanism” was reactivated in November 2013. However, in October 2015, a setback clouded the relationship with the downing of the Russian passenger jet carrying Russian tourists from Sharm El-Sheikh, killing all 224 aboard. This prompted Moscow to ban Russian tourists from coming to Egypt and halt all aviation flights between the two countries.

Despite the tourist ban, in December 2017 Putin made his second visit to Cairo since El-Sisi came to power. During his visit, Putin signed a deal to provide Egypt with four Russian nuclear reactors worth $25 billion, with a loan from Moscow for $20 billion. But another more significant development was the agreement signed by both sides a few days earlier during a visit by the Russian minister of defense to Cairo, which allowed for the mutual use of each other’s airspace and military airbases. This mutual military agreement between Moscow and Cairo has certainly raised some eyebrows in Washington.

Did the Kremlin see an opportunity to supplant Washington as Egypt’s main great power ally and restore the strategic relationship that had existed between Egypt and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s? Most probably Putin and his advisors saw a tactical opportunity to further their interests in the region by developing a strong relationship with an El-Sisi-led Egypt.

Among the more pressing challenges facing El-Sisi was to restore Egypt’s relations with the African Union, which had suspended Egypt’s membership on July 5, 2013, just two days after Morsi’s ouster, describing his overthrow as unconstitutional. This was an action which was described by Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in January 2014 during a visit to Algiers as “wrong and did not take into consideration the specific circumstances that Egypt was facing.” It took almost a year of suspension and the election of El-Sisi to reinstate Egypt in the African Union, which formally took place during the summit at Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea on June 26–27 in 2014.

The situation with the EU was different. The EU could not afford the destabilization of a key partner and a pivotal country on the southern Mediterranean. Offers of mediation between the post June-30 government and the Brotherhood were presented and several visits ensued but with no success. On August 21, 2013, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council condemned in its conclusion “all acts of violence” and “called on all parties to engage in real and inclusive dialogue in order to return to the path of democracy.” It also called for an end to the state of emergency. This position was not maintained, however, as each EU country sought to develop its own relations with the new Egyptian leadership, and soon developed new common interests. Notable among them was Germany, which succeeded in securing a contract with its electric company Siemens to build several mega power plants worth about 8 billion euros. France, for its part, sold Egypt twelve Rafale jet fighters and two Mistral amphibious assault ships (helicopter carriers) which were designated for Russia but had been canceled by Paris in opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

El-Sisi’s challenges from 2013 to 2018 have been to confront terrorism and by extension the Muslim Brotherhood, while at the same time securing recognition and normalization of relations with the African Union, the United States, and the European Union. These priorities will change in his second term as Egypt will have to shift its foreign policy agenda to confront new and ongoing challenges. Chief among these is the need to secure additional capital inflow and investment in order to address Egypt’s chronic economic problems.

Confronting Egypt’s Perennial Economic Challenge
Egypt’s economic problems are certainly not new. In many ways, the interrelationship between Egypt’s economic challenges and its foreign policy have been a constant feature of Egyptian politics dating back to the Nasserist era. In 1956 when Nasser was seeking western finances to build the Aswan High Dam, he nationalized the Suez Canal in response to the withdrawal of financing for the dam by the World Bank, Britain, and the United States. This act ultimately turned Egypt away from the West for twenty years. It was not until the food riots of January 1977 that a weak Egyptian economy forced Sadat to reconnect with Western states and end Egypt’s state of war with Israel.

Therefore, one can safely argue that Egypt’s economic problems have sometimes played a crucial role in shaping major foreign policy decisions even when it was not so visible. For example, ensuring continued economic assistance to Egypt has played a prominent factor in Mubarak’s close ties with the Arab Gulf countries as a way to secure direct Arab financial assistance when needed.

This trend will increase in El-Sisi’s second term. Economic policy will gain more attention and the search for trade partnerships will become more prominent. Egypt’s recent agreement with the IMF to secure a $12 billion loan in return for its implementation of a far-reaching economic reform program was a major step that previous Egyptian governments had long hesitated to undertake. The cost this had on the standard of living of ordinary Egyptians has already been significant. Despite that, Egyptians await the promise of better days to come and for massive megaprojects to bear fruit.

The result of Egypt’s limited economic resources and rising population is that Egyptians import about 60 to 70 percent of their food. Consequently, Egypt is today the largest importer of wheat on the international market. Yet, Egypt’s economic problems are much more fundamental as shown by its large trade deficit, with exports of $22.4 billion to imports of $56.8 billion. Thus, Egypt has the twin tasks of increasing its foreign exports and increasing its revenues from other sources such as tourism which has not yet reached its pre–2011 level of 14.7 million tourists generating $12.5 billion in 2010.

El-Sisi’s second term will also see Egypt developing the special economic zone of the Suez Canal to turn it from a purely maritime artery/route with a limited revenue collected from the tolls of passing ships to a logistical and service hub for international trade. It is in this context that the new Chinese silk road, better known as the “Belt and Road” initiative, presents an opportunity to attract Chinese investments and the potential for a strategic economic partnership.

The need to cultivate new economic partnerships is more urgent as the financial assistance which used to come from the Arab Gulf countries is dwindling and not as forthcoming as it used to be. Gone are the generous donations after June 30, 2013 in which reports indicate that the economic and financial assistance provided by the Gulf countries to Egypt ranged from $30 to $40 billion. With the declining price of oil and the resulting economic slowdown facing many Gulf economies, together with the economic toll of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen, Egypt cannot expect the same level of generosity from its partners in the Gulf.

Yet it appears that the government believes Egypt is too big to fail. As such, Egyptian leaders continue to look for support from the Gulf, and most importantly, from Germany and France. While belief that Egypt is too big to fail may have some justification, it is not a reliable guarantee against further economic downturns, especially in the event of an unexpected international development such as a financial meltdown akin to the 2008 Great Recession.

Should the Egyptian economy fail to grow sufficiently to satisfy the mounting expectations of the Egyptian masses, these expectations will turn into frustration, anger, and then unrest. As such El-Sisi and his advisors should develop more economic options so that they can make diplomatic decisions based on local Egyptian economic realities. El-Sisi does not want his diplomatic options constrained as a result of economic difficulties as was the case with Nasser in 1956 or Sadat in 1977.

Difficult Choices for 2018–22
With the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017, prospects improved for Egypt to enjoy warm relations with both Moscow and Washington. Yet in the past year the possibility of close relations between Trump and El-Sisi did not come to fruition. Firstly, the U.S. Congress has imposed sanctions on Russia as part of the Mueller investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. A more significant and possibly alarming development is that the new Pentagon defense strategy designates Russia and China as America’s geostrategic adversaries in 2018. This designation comes after two decades of the United States focusing mainly on Islamist terrorist threats. Finally, to complicate matters even further, a new trade war between the United States and China looms on the horizon.

These new developments may result in greater international instability and threaten to drive global politics toward more polarization. Today we observe the deterioration of relations between the United States and Russia as well as China. A resurgent Russia and a more assertive China in conflict with a transforming United States mean we can expect Egyptian decision-makers to face some hard choices, as seen in the case of North Korea, when the United States expressed its displeasure over Cairo’s ongoing military relations with Pyongyang.

El-Sisi will face a different set of challenges during his second term as president. This is partially due to the president’s success in confronting issues of legitimacy, recognition, and normalization with various countries and international organizations after June 30, 2013. As he embarks on another term and the international and regional environment continues to change and become more polarized, El-Sisi could be asked to make some hard, diplomatic decisions.

Alaa Elhadidi is a retired Egyptian diplomat and former ambassador to Turkey, Russia, and Romania. From 2013 to 2014 he was director of the Institute for Diplomatic Studies in Cairo, and served as spokesperson for the Egyptian prime minister (2012–13) and for the ministry of foreign affairs (2006–07). He is a regular columnist for Al-Sherouk newspaper.

For the better part of two decades, a debate has raged in American research and policy circles about whether the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a moderate political force that could enhance a democratic and liberal process in the country. Having sporadically engaged in this debate, I have often argued that the Muslim Brotherhood’s political program—a document that was never officially made public but was given to a select number of writers and opinion makers for comment, including the author, in 2007 for review and comment—reflects its true nature as a radical theocratic political organization that is far removed from democracy or liberalism.

In 2018, the Muslim Brotherhood continues to be the same radical, theocratic organization that it was since its foundation in the second decade of the last century. The only change is that the debate about the true nature of the movement continues against the backdrop of the dramatic developments that have unfolded in Egypt since the January 25 uprising of 2011, during which the Muslim Brotherhood succeeded in attaining near-complete political control of Egypt’s legislature and executive power in 2012–13. Consequently, the debate about the nature of the movement, its purpose, and its relationship to terrorism, has acquired a renewed salience. 

Revisiting the Debate on the Brotherhood’s Political Islam
The debate about political Islam emerged in many ways as an outgrowth of a prior debate regarding the sources of terrorism in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. Both debates have focused on the roots of violence and terrorism emanating from the world of political Islam, which encompasses both Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). These debates raised questions that have been the subject of ongoing controversy among observers and critics of the Brotherhood. 

What place does the Muslim Brotherhood occupy in the context of political Islamist movements? To what extent is the Brotherhood distinguishable from militant groups such as Al-Qaeda? Is the Brotherhood itself a terrorist and violent organization or something different? If incorporated into a process of political democratization, can the Brotherhood moderate its views and eventually constitute a force for liberalization and political pluralism? 

Two schools of thought have since emerged on both sides of this debate, one that emphasizes the overall sociopolitical context as the dominant factor influencing the ideological and political trajectory of the Brotherhood, and another that focuses on the core ideological makeup of the movement that has remained relatively unchanged since its foundation. 

The first school of thought views terrorism as essentially a symptom of deeper root causes related to the dysfunctions of the state in the Middle East which exhibits underlying “grievances” that if pervasive will generate terrorist groups. This approach can be termed the “Root Causes Theory.” Proponents of this theory often criticize ruling regimes in the region as using the threat of terrorism to avoid demands for democratization and political reform. The exact nature and scope of the root causes differ from one proponent to another, from socioeconomic factors, cultural and ethnic divisions, to repression and violations of human rights. However, all root causes constitute factors that are conducive to the rise of terrorism and political extremism, of which movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood are an outgrowth. 

The second school of thought emphasizes the role of ideas and values in motivating individuals and organizations to act violently and resort to terrorism to achieve ideologically inspired objectives. Similar to the way in which Nazism and fascism had emerged as byproducts of Western political thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the second school of thought posits that radical Islamism derives its intellectual and ideological origins from centuries-old traditions of Islamic political thought. 

Political Power in the Ideological World of Islamism
Three political theories have dominated Islamic political thought about the origins of power and legitimate authority that emerged following the death of the Prophet Mohammed.

The first theory was founded on the belief that power should be vested in the family of the Prophet or “the People of the House,” Ahl Al-Bait, a belief which constitutes the foundation of the Shia. Despite myriad divisions that exist within Shiism about which line of political succession from the Prophet should be vested with political authority, the major point here is that the message of Islam had come to Mohammed because of the traits of his family and clan, and therefore that his closest kin are best suited to maintain the purity and righteousness of his call.

The second major theory of Islamic political thought argues that power should be vested in those who are capable of ruling by virtue of the size of their following, their ability to maintain group cohesion or assabia, and their ability to wield and command military power. Those were called Ahl Al-Sunna Wa-l-Gamaa, or the people of Sunna and community. In short, Sunni Islam established that governance should be in the hands of rulers who are guided by the Quran, and the sayings and behavior of the Prophet, and finally what the community of Muslims decide. Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun emphasized assabia as the source of ruling and governance. The Umayyad and Ottoman Caliphates translated this theory to reality.

Alongside Sunnism and Shiism, a third political tradition emerged within Islamic thought arguing that power should not be vested according to the bloodline to the Prophet, nor should power be given to those who could rule through force. Rather, political power is the prerogative of God alone, and those who do not rule by the word of God are infidels. Adherents of this tradition became known as Khawarij, or rebels. Belonging neither to the Sunni nor Shia sect of Islam, the Khawarij coalesced into a dissenting third party which established the doctrine of Al-Hakimia—a political creed which emphasizes that political power belongs to none other than God. As the word “Khawarij” denotes, it is a group that rebelled against that political order that emerged from both Sunnism—the Caliphate—and Shiism—the Imam. 

For centuries, the divisions between these three traditions of Islamic political thought constituted the basis of political rivalry within Islam. Today, they continue to provide the basis of legitimacy for the many movements, organizations, and sects that consider themselves to be part of the universe of political Islam. What is important to note, however, is that only the third group had sanctioned assassinations and different forms of political violence to achieve its objectives, while branding their opponents as infidels. 

It was this third strand of Islamic political thought that would constitute the ideological basis for the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the ideological and political vacuum left after the dissolution of the Islamic Caliphate in 1924 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Four years later the Society of Muslim Brothers was born in Egypt espousing the fundamental tenets of the Khawarij paradigm of power and authority not only for Egypt but for the entire Islamic World. Since then, this development has formed the basis of the ongoing clash between the modern state model and the religious “Khawarijite” or Kharijite state model in Egypt and across the wider Muslim world. 

The ideological, organizational, and doctrinal tenets espoused by the Brotherhood are often overlooked by advocates of the “root causes” approach. Rather than constituting a force for political pluralism or ideological moderation, a close examination of these tenets reveals the Brotherhood as a totalitarian organization that is irreconcilable with the fundamental pillars of a modern democratic polity. 

The Muslim Brotherhood as a Totalitarian Organization
The discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood reflects a fundamental and persistent divergence between their general pronouncements and specific policy proposals, as well as between what they say in English for a global (Western) audience, and what they say in Arabic directed at their constituency. Serious scrutiny of their documents and public discourse reflects a project of religious tyrannical orientation. The political project of the Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere has four basic aims: creating the “faithful man,” establishing the theocratic polity, enhancing the interventionist state, and advocating confrontational foreign and national security policies. To achieve these aims, the founders of the MB in 1928 put forward a plan for “Action,” “Organization,” and “Ideology.”

By action, the Brotherhood draws a distinction between two conditions: weakness and empowerment, both of which are measured by the prevailing balance of power. When the balance of power with other political forces—whether they are in government or in the opposition—is not in their favor, the Muslim Brotherhood exhibits an image of moderation. This is particularly evident in the United States, Europe, and generally in Western countries where the Brotherhood succeeded in mastering the representation of Muslims and speaking on their behalf. These include in the United States virtually all major entities representing Muslims in contemporary American politics: The Islamic Society on North America (ISNA), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CARE). Under such conditions, the Brotherhood discourse will emphasize democracy (Shoura), human rights, civic society, equality, and condemnation of violence. In their declaration in pre-2005 parliamentary elections in Egypt, the Brotherhood stated that their goal is to establish in Egypt, a “democratic, constitutional, parliamentary, and republican system.”

However, with the Brotherhood the devil is always in the details. The Brotherhood never fails to inject conditions and reservation into their liberal statements such as “within the confines of the principles of Islam,” or “without prejudice to what is known by necessity about Islamic Sharia,” which entails qualifying whatever moderate policy pronouncements are made so as to conform with their own restrictive interpretations of Islamist doctrine. In this regard the job of politics is not to legislate for public interest, but to make the “right” interpretation of the divine and the sacrosanct. In effect, this approach to governance is not based on legislation by a democratically elected body, but on fatwa. 

Operationalizing the Brotherhood’s program is the task of the “organization” which constitutes the second tenant of the MB’s doctrine. In almost eight decades the Brotherhood has built a massive politico-religious organization that is working locally according to the circumstances of each country. The Brotherhood organization at the same time is global in its reach, encompassing almost eighty-one countries tied together in an internationalist framework in which Egyptians always have had a special place. 

The socioeconomic make-up of the organization is mostly urban and middle class. The MB follows the traditions of totalitarian organizations of the communist and fascist brands which are based on secrecy and a rigidly hierarchical pyramid-like structure composed of a base of small cells reporting to provincial chapters and then finally to a powerful and highly centralized political organ at the top. In the case of the Muslim Brotherhood its highest office has been the “Guidance Bureau” led by the “Supreme Guide” and observed by a “Shura” Council to channel opinions to the leadership.

Throughout the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization has been run by iron-clad rules of “Listening and Obedience,” a rigorous system of socialization and indoctrination into the ideology of the movement that initially was based on the writings and speeches of the original founder Hassan El-Banna, but since the 1950s has expanded to include the writings of Sayyid Qutb. In addition, the organization has taken the name of the Society of the Muslim Brothers. The hierarchical structure of the Brotherhood is reflected in the collection of taxes from its members, the investment in businesses to generate funds nationally and globally, and spending on the political and social activities of the movement. 

All in all, the Muslim Brotherhood has constructed one of the most extensive financial and political organizations in the Arab and Islamic worlds. In Egypt, despite periodic confrontations with the state during the monarchy and the republic eras, it is this organization that has enabled the Brotherhood to weather the many storms it faced, emerging more powerful and capable from its confrontations against the Egyptian monarchy, the Nasserist state, and later against the Hosni Mubarak regime. Strict secrecy surrounding the inner workings of the organization, its politics, finances, and membership are maintained at all times even after the Brotherhood was legalized in 2011 and when they controlled the parliament and the presidency.

Two major organs have been basic to the work of the Brotherhood: a very effective propaganda machine, and a special paramilitary apparatus. Both were under the direct leadership of the Guidance Bureau and the Supreme Guide. The propaganda machine had used books, leaflets, statements, speeches, and sermons at mosques to propagate the message of the movement. The logo and its flag depicts two crossed swords with the Quran in between and under the swords the word “Prepare,” which is the initial word in a Quranic verse that commands Muslims to ready themselves for, “terrifying the enemy of God and your enemy.” 

Later on, particularly in the past two decades, the Brotherhood has been savvy in its use of modern audiovisual and digital communications. Currently, the Egyptian Brotherhood operates TV stations from Doha in Qatar, Istanbul in Turkey, and London in addition to numerous digital platforms and news agencies. 

Reinforcing the organizational hierarchy is the Brotherhood’s paramilitary organization which dates back to the establishment of the movement with the formation of the “Special Apparatus” by its founder El-Banna. The Brotherhood plot under the leadership of Qutb in 1965 to sabotage public infrastructure and key political and military facilities revealed the scope and capabilities of this secret organization. During the 2011 uprising, the Brotherhood displayed the same prowess and organizational skill, enabling them to take on the police and enforce discipline among their followers in Tahrir Square.

Complementing the focus on “action” and “organization” as cornerstones of Brotherhood doctrine is the primacy of ideology as the central pillar shaping the identity of the Brotherhood as a totalitarian organization. True to its founder (Hassan Al Banna) and its later mentor (Qutb), the Muslim Brotherhood has been an ideological organization par excellence. According to El-Banna: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” In order to achieve the Brotherhood’s goals, the members of the organization have to abide by five major doctrinal principles:

1.
Al Hakimia, the Khawarjite principle of upholding God’s word to guide and control man, society, and the globe is the defining understanding for the movement to move forward.

2.
Allegiance and Obedience by all members of the movement ensure unquestioned adherence to the direction of the Brotherhood leadership embodied in the Supreme Guide and the Guidance Bureau, while at the same time reinforcing the rigid hierarchy of the organization. 

3.
Jihad is the ultimate mission of the Muslim Brotherhood on Earth to spread the word of Islam by all means including force. Ironically, it is a matter of consensus among all Muslims that Islam has five main pillars: the Shihada or the testimony that God is One and Mohammed is His messenger, prayers five times a day, fasting in the month of Ramadan, alms to the poor, and the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca if the Muslim has the means. To these the Brotherhood added the tenet of jihad as an additional core pillar of Islam. 

4.
The inevitability of confrontation with Western civilization with its secular nature—irrespective of the particular political ideology prevailing in any given Western country whether liberal or socialist—is the essence of the jihad.

5.
Takfir despite ignorance was a major addition by Qutb to MB literature as before him the lack of Islamic knowledge was considered an excuse from the Kafir or infidel description.

Taken together the doctrinal tenets of “action,” “organization,” and “ideology” reveal the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood as a political movement similar to those totalitarian organizations that emerged whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum. None of these have historically emerged except through the employment of political violence as an instrument to realize ideologically inspired objectives. In the case of the Brotherhood, violence has been a consistent vehicle by which the organization has sought to intimidate opponents, dominate societies, and suppress dissent. 

The Brotherhood–Terrorism Nexus
The 2014 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) studied terrorism in 162 countries from 2000 to 2013 during which the frequency of terrorist operations and number of casualties were on the rise. One of the significant findings of the GTI was that terrorism and extremism are concentrated in a number of countries. In 2013, 80 percent of the victims were in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria. All had Muslim Brotherhood organizations in addition to a cocktail of other militant organizations from the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Al-Qaeda, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Al-Shabab in Somalia. The highest region in the world for militancy and extremism is the MENA region where 53 percent of all suicide operations occurred.

The GTI 2014 has refuted the prevailing theory in the West of the root causes theory of terrorism: that there are underlying social grievances which result in terrorist activity. Rather than the presence of pervasive root causes to terrorism, the GTI study found that “there is no systematic link to poverty measures, nor to several broader economic development factors such as Human Development Index or its subcomponents such as the mean years of schooling, or life expectancy. Similarly economic indicators such as year to year GDP growth do not correlate.” 

So if the root causes theory is not correct, what did the GTI study determine were the reasons behind the development of terror networks? GTI suggested that the reasons for terrorism can be found in the convergence of socioeconomic factors such as political instability, intergroup cohesion, and legitimacy of the state. For example, despite the fact that secessionist movements featured prominently in terrorist networks in 2000, the main source of terrorism—religion—soon emerged as a dominant factor, particularly in the MENA region where it was the cause of 80 percent of terrorist attacks. In addition to the GTI study, both Gallop and Zoghbi polling in the Middle East reflect many of the same conclusions. The salient role of religiously inspired terrorism has also been confirmed by several credible analysts of terrorism. For example, Daniel Byman observed that “afflictions that began as the products of the underlying problems of the region, have become causes of security problems in their own right, and merely solving the root causes is no longer enough.” 

It is thus religion or the Khawarij model and paradigm of governance, rather than root causes, which constitutes the major correlating factor behind terrorism. The Khawarij tradition espouse a radical model of the state that the Brotherhood sought to implement in Egypt after the 2011 uprising in the form of the 2012 constitution in order to create not an authoritarian state but a totalitarian–religious one. 

The linkages between the Muslim Brotherhood, religious extremism, and terrorism in Egypt are an important part of the debate about the Brotherhood movement. These linkages are more complex than it would seem at first glance as the Brotherhood acts as an incubator, a mobilizer, and at times as a perpetrator of different forms of violence. 

As an incubator the Brotherhood fostered the emergence of more extremist groups, movements, and political parties. None of them, however, deviated from the core tenets that dominated Muslim Brotherhood doctrine since its founding by El-Banna, and later influenced by Qutb. 

As perpetrators of terrorism, the early Muslim Brotherhood perpetrated assassinations in the 1940s against Egyptian governmental, judicial, and military leaders. In the late 1940s, members of the Muslim Brotherhood firebombed Jewish houses and shops. Later, in 1954, the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to assassinate President Gamal Abdel Nasser. All of this culminated with the execution of Qutb in 1966 for leading a wide-ranging campaign of violence targeting railways, roads, and public facilities. Today, Qutb has a larger influence over terrorist groups that have spun out of the Muslim Brotherhood, and which have been more forceful in agitating for violence as a vehicle to attain political power. 

During the 1970s, there was the Islamic Liberation Party, which tried to overthrow the ruling elite in Egypt. Its failure did not prevent Egyptian terrorist group Al-Takfir Wa-l-Higra from attempting to blackmail the state by assassinating former Minister of Endowment Mohamed Al-Dhahabi. Universities, particularly in Upper Egypt, produced Al-Gamaa Al-Islamia, and the more violent Jihad group, both of which collaborated in the assassination of President Sadat. None of these groups deviated from the original principle of Al-Hakimia of the Khawarij doctrine, and the core ideological tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood. A number of the leading members of these organizations have passed through the Brotherhood at one time or another. Many of the global terrorist “stars” were once members of the Brotherhood. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presumptive mastermind of the 9/11 attack, and Mohamed Atta, one of its operational leaders, had been active members of the Brotherhood in Yemen and Egypt, respectively. Ayman Al-Zawahiri—the current leader of Al-Qaeda—started his terrorist career following his initial indoctrination as a member of the Brotherhood. 

As a mobilizer, the Brotherhood has helped financially and logistically, the Afghani Jihad and both Al-Qaeda and ISIS, whether in Syria or in Egypt. The Brotherhood leadership never really denounced terrorism without adding qualifying “buts” and “ifs” under the banners of resisting foreign powers or fighting local authoritarianism. One has to look hard to find the word “terrorism” in any of the Brotherhood basic documents. The Brotherhood’s financial and propaganda machines are working at full force to delegitimize the current Egyptian political system. Incitement for the use of violence as a mode of protest is a daily practice against Egypt, propagated through the TV channels Asharq, Mekameleen, Al Arabi Al Gadid, and others.

A Continuing Legacy of Violence
For four decades, the Egyptian government and the Brotherhood went through a gradual process of accommodation. During the 1970s President Sadat released the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood from prison. This was followed by President Mubarak who paved the way for the Brotherhood’s participation in the political process, culminating in the 2005 parliamentary elections during which representatives of the organization managed to win eighty-eight seats, nearly a fifth of parliament.

However, the expectation that this process of political integration would somehow moderate the ideological tenets of the Brotherhood and prompt the organization to disavow political violence proved unfounded. During the Brotherhood’s participation in the events of the 2011 Egyptian uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood activated their “self-defense units,” which clashed with the police resulting in an estimated 1,075 civilian deaths in the eighteen days of the uprising. The MB initiated waves of attacks targeting prisons, including the main prison of Wadi Al-Natroun, releasing more than 11,000 prisoners including Brotherhood members (soon-to-be President Mohamed Morsi was among the prisoners released from Wadi Al-Natroun) as well as terrorist prisoners from the organizations Al-Qaeda, Jihad, Hamas, and Hezbollah. 

During and after the uprising, members of the Brotherhood also attacked and burned thirty police stations in Cairo plus a number of public buildings, malls, and courthouses. The Al-Galaa Courts Complex was burned down and from there the Al Ahram Building was shot at and one of Al-Ahram’s employees murdered.

The Brotherhood’s violence reached its nadir as the political wing of the MB came to the pinnacle of executive and legislative power from 2012 to 2013. The Brotherhood dispelled peaceful demonstrations by force, intimidated state institutions including the Supreme Constitutional Court, and threatened political opponents including prominent media personalities, Coptic Christians, and public figures who criticized the Brotherhood. 

The extent of the Brotherhood’s violent nature as a terrorist organization was on full display during the events of the June 30 uprising. First and contrary to the prevailing views, the MB started to mobilize masses and demonstrations to occupy main squares in Cairo and provinces across Egypt starting on June 21. Sit-ins started to take shape particularly in Rabaa Al-Adawya Square near the Ministry of Defense, and Nahda Square near Cairo University. Clashes with the police and the youth demonstrators of Tamarod or Rebellion movement resulted in civilian casualties, including an American student who died on June 28. The protests in Rabaa and Nahda were mobile, gathering demonstrators from across Cairo and causing a massive disruption of traffic. Also the Brotherhood reportedly had snipers on surrounding buildings of their protests. After fifty-five days of violent sit-ins in Rabaa and Nahda, security forces dispersed them on August 14 after frequent warnings. There were 525 casualties including forty-three police. 

In the immediate aftermath of Rabaa the Brotherhood went on a rampage attacking and burning police stations, killing personnel, taking weapons, and releasing prisoners. In the town of Kerdassa they killed fourteen police officers and their bodies were mutilated. Forty-four churches were burned down and the newly built Museum of Antiquities was robbed and torched. Between June 2013 to the end of February 2016, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS killed nine hundred police officers and committed 1,494 acts of violence across Egypt. Brotherhood members have worked to sabotage Egyptian electricity grids and disrupt traffic. 

When these acts of violence started to cool down by the end of 2016, the MB produced a number of small terrorist groups named the Revolutionary Punishment, the Arms of Egypt movement, and the Revolutionary Brigade. Some members of the MB have joined ISIS and in some terrorist operations Muslim Brotherhood members have provided logistical and financial support. 

As of 2018, terrorism of the Brotherhood and its affiliated fundamentalist organizations continued in Egypt in different forms. While organizations such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda made their terrorist operations in Sinai and the Western Desert, the Muslim Brotherhood concentrated its operations on the Egyptian mainland. 

The Brotherhood Today: Unreformed and Unrepentant
The historical evolution, ideological doctrine, and organizational structure of the Brotherhood all reveal a movement that is as politically totalitarian as it is religiously extreme. The notion that the Brotherhood can ever be a force for pluralism and political openness if only the “root causes” that have driven them to extremism are addressed belies their violent history, their frequent resort to terrorism, and the inescapable reality that it has spawned countless terrorist groups that today continue to afflict Egypt and the region. 

Deriving their doctrinal tenets from the extremist political model espoused by the Kharijites, the Brotherhood is structurally no different from similar totalitarian organizations that have appeared under the banners of fascism, Nazism, and communism. Brotherhood members strive to create a theocratic regime not so different from the Iranian political system. In their actions, organization, and ideology, the MB acts as an incubator of terrorists, a mobilizer of human and material resources to fund and to defend terrorism, whether directly or indirectly. 

The global reach of the organization has given the Muslim Brotherhood the ability to survive by adapting itself to existent political realities. In Egypt the Brotherhood opportunistically grew their organization as a so-called “economically liberal” social group, all the while never condemning violence or jihad in its rhetoric or its actions.

Despite the political opening provided by the 2011 uprisings in Egypt and region, which the Brotherhood cynically exploited to reach the heights of political power, it remained an unreformed, unreconstructed, and unrepentant movement, incapable of engaging in the type of reform and introspection necessary to adjust to the demands of democratic politics. 

Abdel Monem Said Aly is chairman of Al-Masry Al-Youm Publishing House and a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He was chairman of Al-Ahram Newspaper and Publishing House between 2009 and 2011, and director of Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies from 1994–2009.  He is the author of State and Revolution in Egypt: The Paradox of Change and Politics, and co-author of Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East.

In recent years, comparisons have often been made between Egyptian presidents Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Indeed, there are a number of similarities between how both men ruled: both leaders led military movements, which were described as popular revolutions. Both entered an extended confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Both of their states repressed all opposition and sought to curb the independence of the media and of civil society organizations, and both relied on their personal charisma to build legitimacy.

However, behind these apparent similarities and continuities there are equally significant differences. Nasser overthrew the old oligarchic regime made up of the monarchy, the landed elite, and the foreign-born bourgeoisie. In its place, he created a nationalist, socialist-populist, authoritarian regime supported by the military, the state bureaucracy, the salaried middle class, and the lower classes.

El-Sisi, on the other hand, has created a bureaucratic authoritarian regime supported by the military, the upper classes, and some segments of the middle class with the aim of dismantling the welfare state established by Nasser. The primary objectives of this regime have been to restore social order and to restructure the economy in line with the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In fact, since the beginning of Nasser’s rule, the Egyptian state has undergone, not two, but three crucial transitions: a transition from populist authoritarianism under Nasser to post-populist or hybrid authoritarianism under Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, and a subsequent transition to bureaucratic authoritarianism under El-Sisi. Each of these transitions has led to the creation of a new type of regime based on a distinct set of interests, social and economic policies, and political institutions and instruments.

Nasser’s Populist Authoritarianism
After staging a successful coup against the Egyptian monarchy on July 23, 1952, the Free Officers Movement led by then-Colonel Nasser proceeded to dismantle the old political order and to establish in its stead a single-party populist authoritarian regime. The ruling coalition consisted of a social contract where the regime promised rapid economic development, social justice, and national independence in return for political allegiance and a suspension of political rights and freedoms. The new regime was brutal in suppressing all attempts to mobilize against it.

Through a series of measures and decrees, the Nasser regime was able to centralize political power and dissolve all pre-existing political parties and movements including the Wafd party, the largest party under the monarchy. Also, after a brief alliance, the Nasser regime entered into an extended confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which led to the dissolution of its various social and political organizations and the arrest or exile of most of its leaders. The media, civil society organization, labor unions, and religious organizations were brought under the direct control of the regime one way or another: the media was nationalized, and non-governmental organizations were placed under the control of the executive through, for example, Law No. 32 of 1964, also known as the “NGO law.”

During the 1950s and 1960s, the regime also came to control some areas of the economy. In 1956, all foreign-owned assets were nationalized, and in 1961, the same happened to a majority of the assets belonging to the Egyptian private sector in accordance with the socialist decrees of July 1961. The regime also embarked on an ambitious industrialization project and oversaw the creation of a large number of new factories.

The Nasser regime undertook social and welfare functions on a wide scale. Examples included the state employment of all university and technical institute graduates, implemented in 1964. Increased state employment led to a dramatic change in the makeup of the Egyptian labor force with the civil service and the public sector dominating the urban, and to a lesser extent, rural labor markets.

Moreover, in 1963, the state passed a new law which made higher education free for all secondary school graduates. As a result, the number of university and technical university students tripled and the number of technical university students, increased sixfold from 1952 to 1969. The regime also subsidized many basic foods and services including housing, transportation, and healthcare.

But in the wake of the Yemen War and the 1967 defeat, the Nasser regime began to experience economic and political troubles, undermining the bargain struck between the state and its people. Many began questioning the regime’s ability to deliver on its part of the contract, which drove some social groups to demand that political and economic rights and freedoms be restored.

The first popular mobilization against Nasser occurred in February and October of 1968 and was provoked by the lenient sentences handed down to the officers held responsible for the defeat in the June 1967 war against Israel. In response, Nasser issued the “30th of March Declaration” in which he called for introducing democratic elections within the ruling party, and for drafting a new constitution that guaranteed political and security rights and defined the three branches of government. However, given the need to rebuild the Armed Forces and to engage in an extended war of attrition with Israel, these reforms were never implemented during Nasser’s lifetime.

By the time of his death, Nasser had successfully transformed the Egyptian state from an oligarchic regime to a populist authoritarian one. The populist authoritarian regime created by Nasser was legitimized by a ruling bargain: economic development, social justice, and national independence in return for political loyalty. However, the 1967 defeat dealt a severe blow to the Nasser regime and put this bargain into question. After the 1967 war, many groups previously allied to the regime such as students and workers began to mobilize against it demanding the restoration of political rights and freedoms.

Hybrid Authoritarianism under Sadat and Mubarak
After the 1973 War, Sadat sought to consolidate his own legitimacy, to weaken his Nasserist and leftist opponents, and to set himself apart from his predecessor by reorienting Egyptian politics in a more pro-Western and liberal direction. To achieve these objectives, he needed to forge a new ruling coalition loyal to him and to his new policies. By overseeing a partial liberalization of politics and the economy, Sadat was able to win the support of the Egyptian bourgeoisie and of western powers.

Under Sadat, the Egyptian regime thus shifted away from a populist authoritarian to a post-populist authoritarian or hybrid regime. This type of regime allowed for a greater measure of autonomous political, social, and economic activity while keeping in place many of the populist and corporatist measures instituted by Nasser.

In the second half of the 1970s, Sadat adopted a number of policies aimed at liberalizing the political and economic spheres. He dissolved the Arab Socialist Union and created a new ruling party loyal to him (the Egypt Party which was later renamed the National Democratic Party or NDP). He restored—although in a controlled manner—opposition parties and social and political movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood. He extended greater freedoms to the media and civil society organizations and encouraged foreign investment and private enterprise, but also put controls on them. Yet Sadat also continued Nasser’s populist policies such as subsidies, government employment, and free higher education thereby ensuring the continued acquiescence of the lower and urban middle classes.

This dual strategy which combined elements of liberalism with elements of populist authoritarianism ensured Sadat’s continued control of the populist coalition forged by his predecessor while also earning him the loyalty of the Egyptian bourgeoisie, which had grown increasingly outspoken against the constraints imposed by the Nasser regime on political and economic life. This strategy also allowed the regime to balance the interests of different social groups against one another and prevented newly established opposition parties and movements from mobilizing the support of the lower classes, the middle class, and the private sector bourgeoisie—all of whom had been co-opted by the regime in one way or another.

Upon assuming power in 1981, Mubarak expanded and institutionalized the hybrid regime established by Sadat. On the political front, the ruling NDP continued to maintain its two-thirds majority in a rubber stamp legislature while power remained largely concentrated in the office of the presidency and of the executive. Opposition parties continued to increase in number but remained weak and marginal, largely as a result of a restrictive laws and systematic election  fraud.

In spite of periodic crackdowns, the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious movements such as the Salafi movement grew in size and power, and continued to expand their control over a large number of mosques, schools, businesses, and charitable organizations. Other segments of civil society such as business associations and human rights and development NGOs also continued to grow and thrive under the Mubarak regime. Similarly, the size of the media expanded significantly especially with the spread of opposition parties and private newspapers. Moreover, the introduction of satellite TV and the internet greatly diversified access to information and undermined the ability of the regime to control what citizens watched, read, and listened to.

On the economic front, Mubarak maintained important aspects of the bargain established under Nasser’s era of populist authoritarianism, through maintaining a very large number of civil servants—whose number had reached approximately seven million by the end of his tenure—and by maintaining subsidies on essential items such as bread and energy. In fact, the wage and subsidies bill constituted half of all government expenditure during Mubarak’s rule.

On the other hand, Mubarak also did away with other aspects of the bargain. Starting the early 1990s, upon signing on to an economic reform and structural adjustment program with the IMF, the Mubarak regime undertook a privatization program which led to a significant reduction in the size of the public sector and in the number of public sector employees (as opposed to civil servants). Mubarak also reduced government expenditures by reducing spending on essential social services such as education, healthcare, public transport, and housing, as well as removing rent controls on agricultural land and on housing, which had once protected the middle class.

Also under Mubarak, the size of the private sector and its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded significantly. Moreover, the private sector elite expanded their political influence by assuming leading positions within the ruling NDP, and by acquiring a greater share of seats in parliament and holding ministerial positions. The last government cabinet before the ouster of Mubarak was dominated by businessmen with close connections to the ruling party and to Gamal Mubarak, who aspired to succeed his aging father.

The hybrid formula maintained by Sadat and Mubarak succeeded to a large extent in stabilizing the post-populist authoritarian regime in Egypt for almost four decades. In fact, Egypt seemed to defy a projection made by many political scientists that liberalized autocracy or limited liberalization would eventually give way to full democratization or full autocracy. Both Sadat and Mubarak were able to sustain this hybrid formula by on the one hand maintaining important aspects of Nasser’s populist bargain, and on the other hand by relying on selective liberalization/repression, divide-and- rule strategies, access to external rents, and to extensive borrowing externally and internally.

January 25 and the Crisis of the Hybrid State
By the end of Mubarak’s reign, the “hybrid regime” began to unravel. The growing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small group of business elite led to growing discontent within the ranks of the old guard in the military and the state bureaucracy. The old guard felt their political and economic fortunes relatively decline. The final years of Mubarak’s rule saw the emergence of a power struggle between the old guard led by the military and NDP apparatchiks on the one hand and the new guard, which represented the new elite associated with Gamal Mubarak. The outcome of that struggle hinged on the question of succession.

Moreover, the growth of the private sector led to the emergence of a new urban middle class that aspired to greater political and economic independence from the state and that felt entitled to a greater say in the decision-making process. The state’s growing dependence on taxation as a source of government revenue created new pressures for greater representation. Such pressures were felt in the emergence of a more assertive civil society sector, a more independent media, and new protest movements such as the Kefaya and April 6 movements, and also in the attempts to establish more independent political parties. Demands for political and democratic reforms began to gain greater currency, culminating for example in the emergence of a popular campaign to support the candidacy of Mohamed ElBaradei to the presidential elections.

Even civil servants who were considered the principal beneficiaries of the welfare policies of the Mubarak regime saw their fortunes shrink as a result of declining wages, rising prices, and worsening social services. They too began to voice their discontent through protest actions and activism. The protests of real estate tax collectors was the most prominent example of activism by civil servants under Mubarak.

Labor protest also proliferated in the final years of Mubarak’s rule. Starting with the protests by textile workers in Mahalla in 2008, an unprecedented wave of labor activism swept the country with workers in the public and private sectors calling for better pay, better working conditions, and the right to form independent trade unions that represented their interests rather than those of the state.

Finally, the decline of social spending and the growing exclusion of the middle and lower classes created a vacuum which Islamic movements such as the Brotherhood and the Salafi movement filled by establishing an extensive network of mosques and NGOs that provided much-needed educational and health services to the lower middle classes and the poor. The state—which realized the importance of the welfare functions performed by the Islamic welfare sector—largely turned a blind eye and allowed Islamist organizations to spread across the country and to eventually build up a formidable social movement.

And so, the final years of Mubarak’s rule saw growing turmoil both within the ruling regime and between the state and various social actors. The ouster of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali from Tunisia on January 10, 2011 had the effect of bringing various struggles to the fore. A demonstration planned by a number of youth movements to protest police brutality on Police Day in Egypt quickly snowballed into a mass protest, which the police was unable to quell. On the evening of January 28, the military led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF assumed effective control over the country, eventually forcing Mubarak to resign on February 11, 2011, and bringing four decades of post-populist authoritarian rule to an end.

The two years following the ouster of Mubarak were regarded as a failed transition to democracy in Egypt. Democratic elections in 2012 resulted in the rise of Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood to power. The ascendance of Islamists provoked a full-fledged social crisis. The upper class, the state bureaucracy, women and Copts, and secular Egyptians united in rejecting the Islamists’ agenda and in supporting the military overthrow of the first elected Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, on July 3, 2013. Moreover, attempts by the SCAF, and subsequently by the Muslim Brotherhood, and by El-Sisi’s regime to appease the various social and economic grievances through increased government and social spending had the effect of provoking an economic crisis that came to a head in the fall of 2016.

 

Bureaucratic Authoritarianism and El-Sisi
Under General El-Sisi, who led the military movement to oust Morsi and was subsequently elected president in June 2014, the Egyptian regime underwent a transition to bureaucratic authoritarianism. Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes, as described by Henrique Cardoso and Guillermo O’Donnell in the seminal volume, The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, share a number of features. They are led by the military and usually come to power through a military coup against the backdrop of deep social and economic crises that threaten the very existence of the capitalist state and the dominance of the bourgeoisie. They are based on a narrow alliance between the military and the bourgeoisie, and their primary objectives are to restore social order and to stabilize the economy. The bureaucratic authoritarian state thus involves the suspension of the economic and political rights of large segments of the population, a task which requires the use of coercive and repressive measures on a broad scale. Finally, such regimes often enjoy external support from transnational corporations and foreign powers that fear the rise of the lower classes.

Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes emerged in Latin America (Chile, Brazil, and Argentina), in southern Europe (Greece, Spain, and Portugal), and in Asia (South Korea and Indonesia) at a time when the communist threat in these parts of the world was high. Military juntas in alliance with the bourgeoisie and foreign powers installed repressive regimes that sought to restore social order and stabilize the economy by oppressively demobilizing communist forces and their allies.

The Egyptian regime under El-Sisi embodies many of the characteristics of these regimes: El-Sisi led a military movement supported by the upper class and segments of the middle class to oust the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies from power after a period of extended political, social, and economic turmoil.

Upon assuming power, the El-Sisi regime sought to demobilize all opposition through a number of measures. First there came an unprecedented crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which began with the violent dispersal of the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins, resulting in the death of hundreds of Islamist activists and dozens of police officers. This was followed by an extensive campaign which targeted not only the political leaders of the movement, but also its extensive network of social and educational, and economic Islamist institutions, which the regime had previously tolerated.

The effort to demobilize the opposition also extended to elements of the secular opposition, which also came under intense pressure by the regime. These included the youth activists who played a prominent role during the January 25 uprising. They became the focus of a restrictive anti-protest law that effectively ended the cycle of mobilization which had reached its peak with the ouster of Mubarak. A series of regulatory institutions also circumscribed the relatively open media space that had existed for the better part of the last decade. Civil society organizations became subject to new legislation that restricted the ability of NGOs to receive foreign funding outside of the scrutiny of the state. Finally, the legislative elections produced a fragmented parliament that was effectively aligned with the regime at the same time that the regime managed to exert considerable influence over the judiciary through the retirement of a large number of judges suspected of having sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood.

After accomplishing the task of restoring social order and quelling all opponents within the first two years of his rule, El-Sisi undertook a second task characteristic of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes, which is to restructure the economy. The regime had adopted populist economic policies during its first two years in power with the aim of stabilizing his regime politically while weakening opponents. These policies were financed primarily through funding from the Gulf states and by spending from the country’s reserves. However, the rise of foreign debt, the drying up of foreign reserves, and a severe economic recession triggered an economic crisis in 2016.

Consequently, El-Sisi’s regime signed a reform agreement with the IMF in 2016, which constituted the most ambitious attempt to date to dismantle the welfare state in Egypt. In one fell swoop, the Egyptian pound was devalued by more than half of its value, causing an unprecedented inflation and rise in prices that took a toll on the lower and middle classes. Energy subsidies were also removed, causing a rise in gasoline prices, utility bills, and public transportation. Finally, a new VAT tax was imposed on all goods and services. Notably, few of the reforms in question were targeted at the elite, who constituted the regime’s primary support base and possibly the primary beneficiary of these policies in the long run.

By dismantling the welfare state introduced by Nasser and maintained in some important respects by Sadat and Mubarak, the regime did away with the primary basis of legitimacy of the authoritarian rule in Egypt, namely patronage and co-optation. Instead, it resorted to creating a new basis of legitimacy, which El-Sisi himself has labeled the legitimacy of delegation or sharyiat al-tafweed. That means, in rough terms, assuming a savior role after being called upon to rescue the nation from political, economic, and social turmoil. Certainly, the regime has presented the events of June 30, 2013 and their aftermath leading up to the presidential elections of 2014 and 2018 as moments when the Egyptian people have risen to delegate the president to save Egypt from itself and from domestic and foreign conspirators.

Two Opposing Authoritarian Regimes
Though the El-Sisi and Nasser regimes seem similar in many ways, namely in the extreme concentration of power in the hands of the president and the military, in the demobilization of opposition forces, and near-complete state control over political and civil life, these two regimes nonetheless constitute two distinct, and perhaps opposing, types of authoritarianism.

Nasser instituted a populist distributive regime that relied on welfare and populist reforms. In contrast, El-Sisi has established a bureaucratic authoritarian regime with the aim of demobilizing the middle and lower classes and dismantling the welfare state established by Nasser. Though their style of governing may seem similar, these two regimes had very distinct and opposing objectives, which may affect their long-term viability. Populism and post-populism in Egypt endured because they were based on a sprawling welfare state able to co-opt various social groups. The bureaucratic authoritarianism of the current regime is likely to be more tenuous, especially if it succeeds in accomplishing its primary objectives of restoring social peace and jumpstarting the economy. Once these tasks are achieved, the regime’s basis of support might become less reliable as Egyptians demand greater social and political freedoms.

Dina Shehata is a senior researcher and editor of Al-Malaf Al-Masry (the Egypt Brief) at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Previously she held various posts including: special advisor to the United States Institute of Peace’s Muslim World Initiative and program officer at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. She is the author of Islamists and Secularists in Egypt: Opposition, Conflict & Cooperation.

When the Organisation of African Unity decided to change its name to the African Union in 2002, it was clear that this change was inspired by a desire to replicate the most successful regional organization in the world: the European Union. This may have been a major strategic mistake. The European Union experience holds few lessons for Africa or other developing regions.

By contrast, the second most successful regional organization in the world, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), provides more valuable lessons. This is because ASEAN was destined to fail, not to succeed. Indeed, when ASEAN was founded on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, it would have been difficult to find a more troubled region than Southeast Asia.

This is how veteran Singaporean diplomat, Bilahari Kausikan, described the fraught climate in the region in 1967: “Consider the situation in 1967. All five ASEAN countries faced Chinese-inspired, if not directly backed, internal Communist insurgencies…. At the same time, almost every member of the five original ASEAN members was at the other’s throat.”

He notes that racial tensions were running high between Malaysia and Singapore, which had recently separated. Indonesia, which had undergone a failed and bloody coup in 1965, had just ended an undeclared war against Singapore and Malaysia. The Philippines had laid claim to a large chunk of Sabah, an east Malaysian state. And proto-irredentist movements on their borders plagued relations between Malaysia and Thailand as well as between Indonesia and the Philippines.

Many contemporary observers shared this pessimistic view of Southeast Asia’s prospects. United States Supreme Court Justice William Douglas was quoted as saying that Southeast Asia, “confronted with staggering problems…rich in people and in resources and a prize for the Soviet empire builders—will long be turbulent and uneasy.” Columbia University professor Nathaniel Peffer was dismissive of the potential benefits of a Southeast Asian regional organization: “For practical purposes, having regard to the situation that confronts us in Southeast Asia in 1954, what would a Southeast Asia organization amount to? The situation is clear enough; Indo-China falling partly under communist domination at the best, wholly under communist domination at the worst, and Thailand first and then Burma falling under the red shadow.”

Even if politics had not troubled the region in 1967, Southeast Asia would still have been unsuitable ground for an exercise in regional cooperation. Samuel Huntington’s famous argument on the “clash of civilizations” is pertinent. The current conflicts in the Middle East and the recent strain of xenophobic populism rising in the West would seem to bear out his theory. And given that no other region on our planet is as diverse as Southeast Asia, we should have expected to find ASEAN dead on arrival.

“Balkans of Asia”
In most of the world, the major civilizations largely live apart in separate geographical areas. Christians live in Europe and the Americas, Chinese–Confucianists live in China and East Asia, and Muslims live in an arc from Morocco to Indonesia. Hindus live mostly in India, and Buddhists are found sprinkled from Sri Lanka to China, Korea, and Japan. Only in Southeast Asia do all these different cultures and civilizations meet. No other region in the world can match its cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. In a relatively small geographical space, there are 240 million Muslims, 130 million Christians, 140 million Buddhists and seven million Hindus. This range is remarkable in itself. Yet, it actually masks an even deeper cultural diversity. For instance, most of the Acehnese and Javanese people in Indonesia are Muslim. However, culturally, these two ethnic groups could not be more different. This is one reason why the Acehnese fought a bitter war of separation from Indonesia for several decades.

One well-known British historian, C.A. Fisher, described Southeast Asia as the “Balkans of Asia,” adding that it was even more diverse than the Balkans of Europe. He predicted trouble for the region. Similarly, Thanat Khoman, one of the five founding fathers of ASEAN, wrote: “In terms of power politics, Southeast Asia became more or less Balkanized, as Eastern Europe had been on the eve of World War I. Each nation, following its own destiny, spoke a political language of its own, which was not generally understood. There was neither unison nor a lingua franca.”

In short, when ASEAN was founded, there was understandably very little hope for its survival. But ASEAN has done more than survive: it has succeeded. No other regional organization has done as much to improve the living conditions of a broad swath of humanity. The more than 600 million people living in the region have seen remarkable progress in the fifty years since the formation of the association. ASEAN has brought peace and prosperity to a troubled region, generated inter-civilizational harmony in the most diverse corner of the planet, and brought hope to many people. In an era when globalization and technological advancements are bringing once-distant civilizations closer together, ASEAN is a living laboratory which proves that the clash of civilizations can be avoided.

The Far-Reaching ASEAN Effect
The organization may have also acted as a critical catalyst for China’s peaceful rise. As Mahbubani wrote for the Straits Times, “In the 1980s, the strategic alignment of interests between ASEAN, China, and the United States to reverse Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia enabled China to open up to the world. In the 1990s, after the West isolated China following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, ASEAN kept engaging with China. In the 2000s, ASEAN reacted enthusiastically to China’s proposal for enhanced economic cooperation, which also coincided with China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation.”

ASEAN also provided China with a face-saving platform to engage with other major powers during times of tension. In 1998, for example, tensions ran high between China and Japan, in part because Chinese President Jiang Zemin had criticized Japan’s wartime atrocities during a visit to Japan. It was politically difficult for the Chinese and Japanese leaders to meet bilaterally—to diffuse tensions and build bridges—without losing face. However, they were able to do so at the ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, and South Korea) meeting in Hanoi later that year. And, perhaps most importantly, by creating stability in Southeast Asia, ASEAN allowed China to focus on achieving growth instead of concerning itself with regional security.

Southeast Asia also provides a burst of optimism in an era of growing economic pessimism. This once-impoverished region has experienced remarkable economic growth. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim observed that in just thirty years, Vietnam has reduced extreme poverty from 50 percent to roughly 3 percent—“an astounding accomplishment.” Indonesia, once an example of continuing and persistent poverty, has one of the most optimistic youthful populations in the world. According to the Conference Board Global Consumer Confidence Survey, in the fourth quarter of 2017, Indonesian consumer confidence was the third highest in the world. The Philippines’s was the highest.

ASEAN has provided its member states with a better negotiating platform than they could have achieved on their own. Their economies have been boosted by the ASEAN Free Trade Area agreement and by ASEAN’s free-trade agreements with other major economies such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea, as well as Australia and New Zealand. And, following the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community on December 31, 2015, ASEAN now has a projected average annual growth of 5.2 percent from 2016 to 2020. By 2030, analysts estimate, its combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could increase fivefold to $10 trillion, and it could become the fourth-largest single market in the world.

Moreover, ASEAN has created an indispensable diplomatic platform that regularly brings all the great powers together and provides conducive environments for them to talk to each other. Such platforms are crucial, as many leading geopolitical thinkers predict rising tensions between great powers—especially between America and China. Within ASEAN, a culture of peace has evolved as a result of assimilating the Indonesian custom of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus). Now ASEAN has begun to share these cooperative norms with the larger Asia-Pacific region—and beyond. More than thirty countries have acceded to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC). Besides providing an important platform for the great powers and regional players to engage with each other, ASEAN-led regional fora—such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus)—further solidify these cooperative norms in the region.

ASEAN has facilitated China’s peaceful rise by generating an ecosystem of peace that moderates aggressive impulses. Thai journalist Kavi Chongkittavorn notes that, for example, China acceded to the TAC, which specifies that ASEAN-China relations are to be “non-aligned, non-military, and non-exclusive.” China then applied what it learned from this experience with ASEAN to its relations with central Asia. Scott Blakemore writes in Culture Mandala that in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), China “has taken a leading role in developing its principles and norms and therefore it has seen the benefit of the ‘ASEAN Way’ and adopted it to Central Asia. Indeed, it is not surprising to find that the ‘ASEAN Way’ is, in many ways, similar to the SCO’s ‘Shanghai Spirit’ of mutual trust and benefit, equality, consultation, respect for different civilisations, and common prosperity.” Thus, ASEAN’s effect has grown far beyond the confines of the region.

Perfect Organization?
Does this mean that ASEAN is the perfect regional organization? Absolutely not. Its many imperfections have been well documented, especially in the Western media. For example, The Economist observed on January 2, 2016 that “grandiose statements from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are the region’s Christmas crackers: they appear at regular intervals, create a commotion but contain little of substance….There is no mechanism to enforce the group’s many agreements and treaties. Regional banking systems and capital markets remain unintegrated. Tariffs may vanish, but non-tariff barriers pop up in their place. Members continue to set their own intellectual-property, land-use and immigration policies.”

These criticisms are not wrong. ASEAN never progresses in a linear fashion. It often moves like a crab: it takes two steps forward, one step backwards and one step sideways. Viewed over a short period, progress is hard to see. But when one takes a longer view, analyzing progress decade by decade, ASEAN’s evolution becomes visible. Initial ASEAN meetings were characterized by a palpable distrust, in light of the bilateral disagreements between the founding members. Yet, twenty years later, an undeniable camaraderie had developed. Although ASEAN was formed to fight against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, especially from Indochina, thirty years later, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia actually joined ASEAN. ASEAN had even operated with no formal charter since its founding until 2007, a whole forty years later. Each of these crucial developments must have seemed inconceivable in 1967.

ASEAN has also escaped dysfunctions that beset many other regional organizations. For example, many regional organizations are dominated by one country, instead of operating on a basis of equality. Because the Organization of American States is dominated by the United States, it cannot—unlike ASEAN—be inclusive and incorporate a Communist Party-run state like Cuba. Similarly, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is dominated by China, which sets the agenda. When a regional organization is dominated by one power, its other members have less of a say over the workings and decisions of the organization. Naturally, they will not develop a strong sense of ownership of the organization. Furthermore, the fact that no one member state dominates ASEAN is a source of trust for third parties. It means that the organization will not make decisions which serve only to promote the interests of a major power.

One essential paradox about ASEAN needs to be observed: ASEAN’s strength can be found in its weakness. ASEAN has emerged as the indispensable platform for great-power engagement in the Asia-Pacific region precisely because it is too weak to be a threat to anyone; as a result, all the great powers instinctively trust it. This even allows for dialogue with North Korea, which is what the Philippines’s foreign ministry spokesman Robespierre Bolivar noted when he lauded the ASEAN Regional Forum (or ARF) as the only venue in which governments of the region can have candid, free-flow dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As George Yeo, the former Singapore foreign minister, explained it: “In the end, everybody came to the conclusion that however ungainly, however inefficient, however elliptical ASEAN’s ways are, it’s still better than not having an ASEAN. That is the genius of ASEAN foreign policy. In the end, almost with a sneer, they accepted that ASEAN should be in the driving seat. Yes, ASEAN’s leadership is the most preferred because no other driver would be trusted by the others.”

In comparison, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), founded in 1985, is dysfunctional because the bitter India–Pakistan rivalry prevents any real cooperation. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is dysfunctional because the level of trust among its members is low, despite the organization having been around since 1981. In principle, the level of trust and confidence should have been high within the GCC since the member states share many commonalities, including language (Arabic), religion (Islam), social structure (traditional ruling families), and geopolitical interests (fear of Iran). Yet, the recent diplomatic crisis in the Gulf has revealed undeniable fault lines within the GCC. The SAARC faces a similar issue: The Hindu reported in December 2017 that speaker after speaker at an international conference on the changing dynamics in SAARC cited the trust deficit as one of its biggest challenges going forward.

The strongest regional organization is, of course, the European Union. Its combined GDP of $18 trillion dwarfs those of the other organizations. But it is difficult to take the European Union as a model for regional integration. Its nature is not easy to discern. In theory, it is an economic union designed to promote economic integration. In practice, it was set up primarily to prevent another major war in Europe. Because the Europeans had a huge incentive to put their violent rivalries behind them, and because the European Union is a mono-civilizational club of Christian countries, it is not surprising that the European Union is the world’s most successful regional organization. And even though it is organizationally strong, it has faced unique challenges and vulnerabilities, with the threat of Grexit in 2012 and the surprise development of Brexit in 2016.

On the other hand, ASEAN is a multi-civilizational club of unparalleled diversity. It has helped its members overcome the unresolved and seemingly insurmountable conflict and distrust that roiled the region in 1967. It has achieved remarkable economic growth and raised its people out of abject poverty—combined, ASEAN’s GDP is now the fifth largest in the world. It has taken a position of geopolitical weakness and turned it into a strength. This is why all developing countries and regional organizations should make a deep effort to study and understand the hidden genius behind ASEAN’s success. In theory, ASEAN should have failed. But in practice, it has succeeded brilliantly. By transforming one of the planet’s most conflict-ridden and poverty-stricken regions in the 1960s into one of its most peaceful and prosperous regions, it is clear that ASEAN has delivered a true miracle. This is why only ASEAN can serve as a beacon for the rest of the world.

Parts of this essay are adapted from Mahbubani’s book, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace.

Kishore Mahbubani is professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and is senior advisor at the University and Global Relations office. He previously served as dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He spent over thirty years as a diplomat in the Singapore diplomatic service, serving in various posts including, Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN; President of the UN Security Council; and Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry. He is author of several books including, Has the West Lost It?; The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World; and The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, published in New York and Cairo.

Kristen Tang is a research assistant in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power. By Ellen R. Wald. Pegasus Books, New York, 2018. 448 pp.

Two years ago, then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman shocked the world when he announced that 5 percent of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi ARAMCO, would be offered publicly. His valuation of $2 trillion or more for all of ARAMCO would make it the most valuable company on the planet. Since then he has steadily consolidated power, pushed out rivals, and reshuffled the government. Now the 32-year-old is next in line to be king.

For the young and brash Mohammed Bin Salman, the ARAMCO IPO announcement was a declaration of independence. No longer would Saudi Arabia be hostage to the boom-bust cycles of oil prices, he swore. Instead, the kingdom would dare to end its dependency on oil, which dated back to its discovery in 1938. To do that Saudi Arabia would rationalize the welfare state and streamline a bloated government. It would also sell shares in ARAMCO and use those funds to develop non-oil industries at home.

Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power, a new book by Ellen R. Wald, neatly tells the story of how ARAMCO evolved from an American company in Arabia into the Saudi ARAMCO we know today: a world-class oil company that is 100 percent Saudi-owned and does much more than produce crude. In a matter of decades ARAMCO elevated Saudi Arabia from the humblest beginnings as a poor backwater, overshadowed by Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad, into a global energy powerhouse and the captain of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Wald’s account is well-written, the characters are colorful, and the stakes are huge throughout. The shrewdness of Saudi leaders since King Abdul Aziz is evident in every chapter.

Wald explores how the company’s success literally and figuratively paved the way for Saudi Arabia’s modernization and urbanization. As she tells it, the company’s efficiency, technical prowess, and merit-based corporate culture made it exceptional in a region where its peers have suffered from political meddling. ARAMCO and oil policy, by contrast, were deemed so precious from the beginning that Saudi leaders made sure to protect them from princely whims. The Saudi state was built on taxes and royalties from ARAMCO. Those petrodollars paid for hospitals, highways, and universities, Wald details, and in later years they paid to extend Saudi influence around the globe through mosques and Wahhabi teachings, with unintended consequences.

Naturally, Saudi-U.S. relations feature prominently in a story about an American company that is gradually bought by the Saudi state. Unlike other oil companies in the Middle East—many of which were nationalized outright—Saudi Arabia purchased tranches of ARAMCO stock from the Americans throughout the 1970s, until Riyadh became the sole owner in 1980.

When most Americans think of Saudi Arabia today, they think of OPEC’s wrath and Al-Qaeda, but in the years after ARAMCO discovered oil, Washington saw cheap Saudi crude as essential to the success of the Marshall Plan in Europe. Americans pumped the crude and the Saudis profited from it, but it was the Europeans who really needed it after World War II. That changed around 1970 when American oil production waned and the United States started importing more oil. Thus, the stage was set for the nastiest spat in the relationship’s long history.

Wald’s reading of the critical period of the 1970s, particularly the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo, may prove controversial because it completely minimizes the role of politics in Saudi oil policy. “Most importantly for Saudi Arabia,” Wald writes, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War “provided an ideological cover for an economic assault on the world economy.” She describes the Arab oil embargo as a “business strategy” disguised as a political decision. This overlooks the fact that King Faisal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud was adamant about Washington playing peacemaker in the wake of the 1967 war. He made this clear to U.S. officials and oilmen many times over; indeed, King Faisal called on President Nixon to seek a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian agreement from the earliest days of Nixon’s administration.

In the six months leading up to the October war, King Faisal warned U.S. media outlets that oil exports could be cut off. He sent his oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani to Washington to deliver the message personally. Previously, Faisal and Yamani had declared their reluctance to use the “oil weapon,” as Wald writes. However, that changed when Nixon sided with the Israelis and launched a massive airlift operation to re-supply them. Wald suggests that the embargo was half-hearted, and perhaps imposed for show, because it cut off U.S. refiners but not the U.S. Navy. Yet that telling trivia is not proof of duplicity. Rather, the decision speaks to Faisal’s priorities: he wanted the Americans to reconsider their support for Israel but he also wanted the United States to succeed in its fight against communism in Southeast Asia. Years of diplomacy and months of warnings leading up to the embargo suggest it was more than merely an economic power play to maximize revenues.

That episode aside, Wald’s account is fascinating and useful because it explains what makes the Saudi oil business so unique. It reads like a blueprint for Saudi success. Oil is the family business but one which the royal family entrusts to technocrats. Over time, as ARAMCO became a Saudi company, it also became an incubator for Saudi professionals in a country where most citizens are employed by the government. Today, ARAMCO functions like a private company but for the public good. In turn, it has become a symbol of national pride. At various points, Wald demonstrates that the Saudis have consistently taken a long-term view on oil matters. In pursuit of their goals, oil and otherwise, Saudi leaders have acted gradually and carefully over many decades. Such incrementalism has served them well when dealing with foreigners and constituents at home, especially those opposed to change.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman should read Saudi, Inc. precisely because his style is so different from those who came before him. Wald’s account makes this clear, albeit implicitly, since her book does not touch on recent events. The crown prince would find much to like in Saudi, Inc. ARAMCO’s corporate ethos is that which the crown prince wants to impose on his government. The results speak for themselves but Wald’s book stands out for its clarity and timeliness.

Matthew Reed is vice president of Foreign Reports, Inc. and a nonresident fellow at New America and the Payne Institute for Earth Resources at the Colorado School of Mines. On Twitter: @matthewmreed.

Freedom without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions. Edited by Frances S. Hasso and Zakia Salime. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2016. 304 pp.

As an American woman and political scientist who has found herself living in Cairo six years after the 2011 uprising, I have found my perceptions of the Arab Spring frequently and viscerally uprooted. Having watched the events unfold through Western network television, it is by now banal to point out that the two narratives that dominated coverage of the uprisings were those of women and social media as the driving forces behind calls for democracy.

Freedom without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions is an example of the burgeoning literature reexamining the Arab uprisings that seeks to challenge both outsiders like myself as well as people who lived through these events. Rather than dismiss the twin narratives of women and social media, it seeks to disrupt and authenticate them by engaging them on their own terms rather than through the Western gaze.

As the title indicates, the contributors to this edited volume focus on the nexus between women’s bodies and the various spaces, both physical and digital, in which the revolutions took place. In the introduction, the book immediately does away with the conventional definition of revolution, which the editors locate in the social sciences, as “transformed states and overthrown leaders.” Instead, the focus is on the “revolution” that took place in the spaces that the uprisings opened up for new forms of expression such as blogging and public squares. In short, the volume reads as an ethnography of micro-revolutions not through the disruption of the state’s monopoly on force, but primarily through women breaking men’s monopoly on space.

Freedom without Permission covers these areas, with each chapter presenting an example from a different country. Two chapters specifically focus on blogging and challenge the Western narrative of the “Facebook revolution” by exploring blogging as a more personal and flexible, but not wholly democratic or safe, medium for women’s expression. The first chapter by Sonali Pahwa centers around the use of personal blogs by young Egyptian women as they publicly struggle with their identities as feminists in a socially conservative environment, even before the eruption of protests in Tahrir Square. Although focusing on blogs reifies the digital component of the uprising that is so elevated by Western analysts, it also adds a layer of complexity by revealing the charged relationship between real and virtual public spaces. For example, a blogger named Fatema describes in vivid detail incidents of sexual harassment on the streets through her blog, and uses her online voice to respond to these incidents in a way that would have been impossible in person—or offline. Her blog opened up opportunities for frank discussions on sexual harassment, while simultaneously provoking intimidating and threatening comments in reaction.

Blogging also features heavily in the penultimate chapter by Karina Eileraas, which focuses on a particular Egyptian blogger, Aliaa Elmahdy, who posted a nude selfie in 2011 to show her despair over the direction the uprising was taking. Intense reaction to her photo caused her to flee to Sweden where she was granted asylum. Similar to the chapter by Pahwa, Eileraas weaves a complex web between Cairo as a “space of paradoxes with respect to women’s bodies,” not dissimilar to the paradoxes women experience online who are finding new subversive platforms to express themselves, albeit ones paired with intense sexism.

The chapters that fall in between take the reader from Tunisia to Yemen, from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and interestingly, even to Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. For a book that from the outset rejects a notion of revolution rooted in the nation-state, it cannot help but be organized along those lines. This is not so much a shortcoming as it is a reflection of the political geography throughout the region: state borders, representing real and hard spaces around which much of people’s daily lives are organized, and other structures such as Islam, pan-Arabism, gender, and digital diasporas, complement as much as they compete with one another. While it is true that political scientists such as myself aren’t equipped to deal with sub-national spaces, it is also a bit wanting to ignore the territorial nation-state—a space that, for better or for worse, is the most potent power structure in the world today, and the main target of the calls to revolution.

There are two chapters, however, that do take nationalism and the state seriously. In Lamia Benyoussef’s chapter on Tunisia, she discusses in detail how gendered symbolism figures prominently into Tunisia’s post-revolution nation-building. Specifically, she reveals how emasculation came to stand for the failure of the state to provide basic needs and services; thus, the need for regime change. Scholars of Western revolutions have noted similar patterns of associating male humiliation with calls for revolution.

Additionally, the final chapter by Banu Gökariksel argues that the Gezi Park protests naturally followed the Arab protests, and addresses the same motif of women asserting new voices and identities in public and online spaces. The author contrasts the Taksim protests that took place within a shifting democracy to the autocracies in the Arab region. The other chapters could have benefitted from a similar transnational comparison.

Freedom without Permission challenges the concept of the “nation-state” as an analytical category, but the deliberate disengagement of the digital and gender revolutions from those of the state is a missed opportunity. Despite this, the chapters can be read as stories of nation-building on the micro-level—of people asserting themselves often in defiance of state power. During calls for regime change, nation-building is at its most robust. Not only does the state have opportunities to reimagine itself, but so do non-state actors, as this book so clearly demonstrates. Those who lived through the Arab uprisings will definitely appreciate a reading of the revolutions that corrects much of the Western misperceptions surrounding the role of women and social media. But they may also feel that there is still so much more to be said.

Holly Oberle is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Before that, she was professor of international relations at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh.

A poster showing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad hangs on a wall in a damaged room inside National Hospital after explosions hit the Syrian city of Jableh, May 23, 2016. Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

Nader Hashemi is an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics and director of the Center for Middle East Studies in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. On Twitter: @naderalihashemi.

In what could be the most consequential decision thus far of his chaotic Presidency, Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  There was no compelling reason for this action now, beyond ideology and his unshakable belief that he can “do better” than anyone else when bargaining.

Much that has been written about this decision is informed by the ideological views of the authors.  The JCPOA was either a “historic mistake,” which Trump has courageously scrapped in order to protect the region and the world from Iran’s nefarious long-term designs, or the JCPOA was the best deal possible under the circumstances, which promised the region at least a decade of respite from this dangerous issue.  Lost in much of this discussion are the facts.

The JCPOA effectively halted Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.  It required Iran to divest itself of 98 percent of its stocks of enriched uranium; dramatically reduce its enrichment activities; permanently disable its plutonium production capability (the “other” route to a bomb besides enriched uranium); and subject itself to the most intensive on-site inspection regime any country has voluntarily accepted in the history of non-proliferation.  In return for this, Iran receives relief from economic sanctions.

The JCPOA contains “sunset” clauses, whereby certain provisions will lapse over a period of time, beginning ten years from the date of signature and extending out to twenty-five years from signature.  However, what will never be removed, if the deal survives the U.S. departure, are key parts of the agreement, including the verification provisions.  So what arguments did Trump and his supporters use to justify their actions?

First and foremost, they pointed out that the deal does nothing to constrain Iran’s missile research, or its regional activities, which are of concern to many (support for the Assad regime, support for terror groups, etc.).  This is true; but the JCPOA was not designed to deal with those issues.  At the time the JCPOA was negotiated it was decided that the key issue was Iran’s nuclear program and that needed to be contained.  There are, in the meantime, other sanctions programs designed to deal with Iran’s missile research and development.

Second, there have been dark murmurings from certain corners that Iran has been cheating.  To this point, all of the authorities charged with monitoring the JCPOA are agreed that Iran has lived up to its commitments.  The new U.S. Secretary of State supported this view in his recent confirmation hearings.  The other signatories to the deal (China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK) are also agreed.  Even the deal’s harshest critic, Israel, has not provided proof of cheating, beyond re-hashed allegations which do not stand up to scrutiny.  Indeed, many senior Israeli security officials, both serving and retired, have stated that the deal is working and is in Israel’s interests.

Third, the so-called “sunset” clauses have come in for much comment.  As noted above, these are only partial and much of the deal is set to remain in effect permanently.  Moreover, the clauses that are going to sunset are not due to begin to be lifted for many more years—so there was no urgency in scrapping the JCPOA right now on this score.  Even if one believed the sunset clauses were a fatal flaw, they do not begin to become a real issue for several years—more than enough time to work within the agreement to find answers and still retain the ability to leave later if necessary.

One can only conclude that Trump’s actions have little to do with the objective realities of the JCPOA.  Instead, his actions appear motivated by a combination of ideology and hubris.  The ideology is that Iran’s theocratic regime is simply unacceptable and must be done away with.  No deal is therefore possible unless its terms are so far-reaching as to effectively cause Iran to cease to be the country it presently is.  The hubris is Trump’s apparently limitless faith in his ability to leverage others to do his bidding.

Of course, it is entirely possible that there is no long-term thinking here.  President Trump has shown a penchant for embracing chaos—for throwing all of the balls into the air and counting on his skill as a negotiator to manipulate fast-moving and unpredictable events to his advantage.  If that is what he doing, he is taking a big risk.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s actions do not simply repudiate Iran; they also repudiate the other signatories to the deal—which include some of America’s closest allies, all of whom counselled, both privately and publicly against leaving the deal—and the entire international non-proliferation system.

Key to the success of Trump’s strategy, to the extent he has one, is the re-imposition of crippling sanctions on Iran.  These existed before the JCPOA was signed and were a large part of the reason the negotiation succeeded.  It seems unlikely that Trump will be able to put together the international sanctions coalition which existed previously, as many of its key members are those he left in the dust by unilaterally leaving the JCPOA.  Trump can use provisions, which enable the United States to penalise those who trade with Iran, but this will only further strain relations with key allies and will not be effective against those immune to such pressures.

Meanwhile, unless the other members of the JCPOA can save the deal, Iran is now free to resume its nuclear activities and is largely outside the shadow of international sanctions.  For the hardliners in Tehran, this can only be considered a win.  For any other country considering making a deal with the United States on a matter of survival, those who counsel that Washington does not keep its word have been strengthened in their arguments.

For the rest of us, the region and the world have become less predictable, more dangerous places.

Peter Jones is associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He previously held several positions relating to international security matters in the Privy Council Office (the Prime Ministers’ Department) and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. He has been active, both as an official and as a practitioner of Track II negotiations and discussions relating to Middle East security over twenty-five years.

With a May 12 deadline looming, the Iran nuclear deal is on life support. Donald Trump appears intent on unraveling one of his predecessor’s top foreign policy achievements: Avoiding war with Iran and preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. Trump opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) from the outset of his presidential campaign, and his disdain for it has grown since entering the White House. To date, Trump has threatened to withdraw from the accord; badgered European allies for supporting it; extorted them with ultimatums to unilaterally renegotiate its terms; and decertified it despite evidence to the contrary. Most recently, Benjamin Netanyahu tried using known information about Iran’s nuclear program – with Trump’s approval – as justification for stumbling into war – or worse, potentially concocting one like the George W. Bush administration in Iraq.

All of this begs the question: Does Trump’s team have an Iran policy? At first glance, it looks like they do. Dig a bit deeper, however, and dangerous strategic incoherence bubbles to the surface. If we take the Trump administration at face value, its Iran policy seemingly consists of three broad-based pillars: viewing Iran as a zero-sum adversary in the Middle East; pushing Europe to adopt a more confrontational Iran policy across the board, and that doing so is important and achievable; pursuing regime change in Iran. Each of these pillars has been tried and failed by Trump’s predecessors dating back to 1979. There is no reason to believe they will succeed today. However, the demise of diplomacy and rising risk of war puts the cost of Trump’s likely failure at an all-time high.

Dancing in the Dark

This much is clear: The Trump administration is uniformly hawkish on Iran. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis called Iran “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East,” saying on multiple occasions that the three most dangerous threats facing the United States are “Iran, Iran, Iran.” Current Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo boasted that “one of the first things the President did is to go build a coalition of [Persian] Gulf states and Israel to help find a platform which could uniformly push back against Iranian expansionism.” Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that U.S. policy will “work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of government.” Newly-minted National Security Adviser John Bolton’s lust for bombing Iran has been well documented over the past 17 years.

Many in the Washington foreign policy establishment would agree with such pursuits as part of any U.S. strategy on Iran. Upon closer examination, however, these core policy principles are flawed. Expressing a desire to “roll back” Iranian influence, “improve” the JCPOA, and pursue regime change is very different than having a coherent strategy for doing so. There is no clear center of gravity in Trump’s Middle East policy. Instead, it operates hand to mouth, situation by situation, Trump visit by Trump visit. To that end, the Trump administration has sought to sufficiently jeopardize the JCPOA’s survival in an effort to generate leverage vis-à-vis Europe to compel the Europeans’ increased cooperation on two fronts: Taking more hardline positions against Iran’s regional policies and missile program; and unilaterally renegotiating the terms of the nuclear accord.

Taking on Tehran

As Trump’s team tries to strong-arm Europe into acquiescence, they are already pursuing their own haphazard efforts to “rollback” Iran. 15 years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, American troop levels have increased by over 2,000 in the past year, the fight against ISIS has continued in order to “avoid an ISIS 2.0,” and stabilization and reconstruction efforts will reportedly soon commence, perhaps requiring even larger troop deployments. In Syria, there are now four times as many troops as previously acknowledged by the Pentagon, and an open-ended military presence has been announced.

However, endless wars and perpetual militarism are neither a means nor an end without clear goals and concrete metrics for success and failure. Trump’s team wants to compete with Iran for influence in places like Iraq and Syria, but has yet to figure out a viable way to do so. In Syria, competing with Iran defies Trump’s impulse to avoid deeper involvement and instead delegate the lead to Russia. In Iraq, it conflicts with Trump’s allergy to anything that resembles diplomacy and nation building.

The Trump administration’s efforts to “roll back” Iranian influence in the Middle East appear even more strategically incoherent when America’s traditional partners in the region are factored into the equation. Since entering office, Trump has green-lighted the Saudi-Emirati blockade of Qatar; Riyadh’s holding the Lebanese Prime Minister hostage; Israeli gambits on Jerusalem and the peace process; and deepening the depth and scope of Riyadh’s humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. In each of the aforementioned theaters, Iran is more influential today than it was prior to Trump’s presidency. Perhaps more troubling is the increasingly apparent reality that Trump has given the Saudis, Emiratis, and Israelis a blank check to pursue their Iran-obsessed agenda without much criticism from his administration—or consideration of American interests.

Perhaps the most telling example of Trump’s lack of a coherent policy came this past October, when he announced his strategy to push back against Iran in the context of decertifying the JCPOA. Despite talking about Iran for nearly 20 minutes, he provided little more than a laundry list of complaints about the Iranian government and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) rather than a strategy on how to push back against them. American allies in Europe have also taken notice of the administration’s policy incoherence. One former European ambassador to Iran recently told me: “I certainly think direct U.S.–Iran dialogue ought to be revived. It’s just an absolute axiom that much as one may oppose Iran, if you choose to oppose what Iran does elsewhere in the Middle East, they are a factor.”

From Iran’s nuclear program to its regional policies and everything in between, the Trump administration is searching for a new object for controversy and for keeping Iran in a defensive position. Trump’s withdrawing from the JCPOA and Netanyahu’s dog and pony show should therefore be viewed through this lens of rollback. Efforts to overthrow Assad and subvert Lebanon are also part of the rollback offensive – and so too is America’s never-ending dream of regime change in Tehran. Another former European ambassador to Iran emphasized to me that many EU officials are deeply concerned regarding the Trump administration’s disorganized efforts vis-à-vis Iran: “There is no doubt that this is an offensive, but we know that this offensive is not a viable proposition.”

Regime Change Resurrection

Thus far, the Trump administration’s rhetoric regarding regime change has been more visible than its actions. In addition to Rex Tillerson’s aforementioned remarks, Mike Pompeo (while still a member of Congress in 2016) called for action to “change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.” President Trump himself has fired off multiple tweets about regime change. In reality, however, it is difficult to gauge the depth and scope of his administration’s regime change efforts because they are largely covert. Trump tapped the CIA officer who oversaw the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and America’s drone strike campaign that killed thousands (including civilians) to run the agency’s Iran operations. To hear U.S. government officials tell it, Congress has continued allocating funds to the State Department for “Iran Democracy” programming – efforts that will likely increase as Trump’s team throws the kitchen sink at Tehran. Beyond that, details remain murky.  

Regime change efforts, both in word and deed, are not new to American policy. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama had, to varying degrees, laced regime change into their respective Iran policies—Bush significantly outweighing his successor. However, many current and former senior officials from both America and Europe are deeply skeptical of this approach. Not only has it repeatedly failed, but it also demonstrates a frightening lack of lessons learned from the Iraq war and its subsequent inquiries. Moreover, America’s track record of meddling in the internal politics of countries around the world is not good. Its track record of doing so in Iran has produced zero success.

A former senior State Department official who served as U.S. ambassador to multiple countries articulated a sentiment that is accepted by governments everywhere except Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi: “The true voice in Iran is what the Iranian people decide. While plenty of Iranians have problems with their government, I know of no Iranians who are prepared to sit back and say foreigners can tell them what their voice is,” he told me over tea in his office. “They know their voice, and eventually that voice will come through, but any attempt to impose outside views on Iran will run into the absolutely concrete reality of Iranian pride and dignity and determination to tell the foreign interferer to get lost. So, this administration’s [regime change] policy will fail. This is not a winning wicket to bat on, to use a British expression.”

For Team Trump, It’s Personal

There is also a less understood dynamic driving Trump administration’s strategic incoherence on Iran: Personal grudges. Trump’s animus against Iran appears to be largely driven by his gut. His impulse to try to be the anti-Obama is well documented, and that has translated into neither a policy nor a strategy, but rather a series of actions carried out in an effort to simply not be Barack Obama. From jeopardizing the JCPOA’s survival, to striking airfields in Syria, to declaring Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, the only discernible common thread in Trump’s decision-making is proving that he is different than his predecessor. Trump’s obsession with killing the Iran deal is remarkably straightforward: He called it ‘the worst deal ever’ during his presidential campaign, although he clearly did not know the details, nor could he describe why it was bad. And once he entered office, he despised the fact that many of his advisors were asking him every 90 days to sign off on “Obama’s deal” – until one day he simply refused to do it anymore. When Trump’s desire to be the anti-Obama is mixed with the foundational Islamophobia that he has repeatedly displayed at home and abroad, a clear picture of where the President is coming from on Iran emerges.

That being said, Trump is not the only one in his administration with a personal grudge. The vast majority of political appointees serving in senior roles on Iran policy are white men with military backgrounds who view the Iranian government through the prism of “payback” after losing in Iraq. To hear one career U.S. government official tell it: “These guys are looking to settle scores, American interests be damned.” This sentiment is also widely acknowledged by current and former officials in both America and Europe. Few would deny that Trump is surrounded by a very hawkish set of advisors on Iran, some of them more ideological than others. People like Pompeo and Bolton are quite ideological. But some like Jim Mattis and senior National Security Council staffers, who are not particularly ideological, are veterans of the post-9/11 conflicts in the Middle East where the United States has found itself on the opposite side of Iran in a number of theaters—particularly in Iraq during the first five years after America’s invasion.

Schizophrenia in the Halls of Power

There is an irony attached to this strategic incoherence: The Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the JCPOA and use it as leverage to compel European policies on a variety of other hawkish fronts has produced the opposite effect. They have managed to frame a discussion where all anyone is talking about is the JCPOA—which is daft because the deal is the one thing that is working. To date, none of America’s European allies have prioritized other issues that relate to Iran. Instead, they have indicated a willingness to discuss other issues while reaffirming that their top priority in any Iran policy is keeping the JCPOA alive and fully implemented by all sides.

This reality has produced yet another irony. Many Trump administration officials and supporters have claimed that the Obama administration allowed the tail to wag the dog – it overly focused on the nuclear deal and was thus inattentive to other elements of Iran’s policy in the Middle East. Beyond the inaccuracy of such claims, it was obvious to everyone that the nuclear file needed to be the priority—everyone, that is, except people who never wanted a deal with Iran in the first place. The only statement of priority that Trump has given to date regarding Iran’s nuclear program is the fact sheet his administration issued on the day he decertified the JCPOA. And yet, the fact sheet emphasizes that blocking all of Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons as the top priority, so even Trump’s team recognizes the centrality of the issue.

So, where does Trump’s Iran policy—or lack thereof—lead? If the past 16 months are any indication: nowhere good. Paradoxically, gaming out his policy is not a question that is amenable to the analytical process because the President has no policy preferences. In other words, you cannot figure out what he is trying to achieve and what risks he is willing to take. What is it that his administration cares about? When it talks about Iran in the region, what is it that they are talking about exactly? What is it that’s so important to the American national interest that they are willing to risk a real national security threat from a proliferation concern? It doesn’t add up.

If this appears schizophrenic, that is because it is. For example, after announcing his displeasure with the JCPOA, intent to “roll back” Iranian influence in the Middle East, and pursuit of regime change in Tehran, Trump ham-handedly requested a meeting with Hassan Rouhani at the UN General Assembly. Mike Pompeo followed up that stunt with one of his own, sending a letter to IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. The unprofessionalism and malpractice in this administration across the board is striking.

Until the Trump administration makes a clear, uniformly held strategic decision about America’s role and objectives in the Middle East, its policy incoherence is all but guaranteed to continue. Without doing so, it will be unable to define what U.S. interests are, and unable to act in accordance with those interests . As Trump’s team stumbles from one misstep to the next, none of them are occurring in a vacuum. With the possible exception of the fight against ISIS, all of the conflicts raging in the Middle East have gotten worse under Trump’s watch. This is compounded by the diplomacy deficit now facing Washington and Tehran.

The Obama administration had resolved this problem through the establishment of numerous bilateral channels of communication, but career U.S. government officials now say that almost none of those channels are utilized by Trump’s team except for the Joint Commission that was created as part of the JCPOA. A former senior State Department official who also served as U.S. ambassador to a variety of countries around the world was grimly honest when providing me with his assessment of Trump’s trajectory on Iran: “We’re going to be in a whale of trouble getting out of where we are right now.”

This begs the question: If Trump doesn’t pull an about face on Iran policy, what can be done to save the JCPOA and avoid war? A good idea at the wrong time is a bad idea. And presently, the Trump administration is widely—and correctly—perceived as the sole aggressor toward the JCPOA, therefore making otherwise sensible policy recommendations for the U.S. government less viable than usual. Still, there are important steps that Washington can take to keep the nuclear deal alive and avoid a war of choice with Iran. Americans should consider the following:

1) Establish Congressional Roadblocks to Killing the JCPOA and Starting War.  Since Donald Trump’s decertification of the Iran deal, Congress has played a surprisingly reasonable role in helping to keep the agreement alive. Both Democrats and Republicans have thus far refused to pass new sanctions legislation containing poison pill provisions that would violate America’s JCPOA obligations. It is imperative that this bipartisan effort should continue for as long as Iran remains in compliance with its end of the bargain. Leaders on both sides of the aisle should add to this effort by stepping up their public discourse about the deal. Democrats and Republicans in both chambers should utilize television, radio, and print media to call out anyone seeking to torpedo the JCPOA. Lawmakers should directly challenge anti-Iran deal policymakers and pundits to articulate a better, more viable plan that ensures needless war is off the table and Iran remains more than a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon, should it make the political decision to do so.

To that end, leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives should immediately begin legislative efforts that require Trump to seek out congressional authorization before pursuing any sort of military confrontation with Iran. This is consistent with the U.S. constitution, and legislating an enforcement of the constitution’s war powers provides much needed supervision. When the Trump administration announced its plans to maintain a U.S. military presence in Syria to fight Iran after the threat from ISIS recedes, Senator Chris Murphy rightly warned that Trump’s team has zero legal authorization to do so, and moving forward unchecked provides the executive branch with absolute war-making power. To hear senior congressional staffers tell it, many legislators share his concern and may be willing to take action accordingly.

2) Revitalize Track 1.5 and Track II Dialogue Between Iranians and Americans. Precisely because the Trump administration has chosen to unilaterally cut off direct, official channels of communication with Iran, there needs to be a variety of unofficial channels established so that reasonable voices on both sides can resume the conversation when Washington and Tehran move beyond the current setbacks. After the 2003-2005 nuclear negotiations between the EU and Iran broke down, Track II and 1.5 conversations gained momentum during that latter part of George W. Bush’s second term and helped establish some of the intellectual framework for the JCPOA. This demonstrates the importance of having fallback plans for dialogue, even if Trump’s team is forcing them to occur outside of official channels.

In the same vein, senior American officials in the State Department, Defense Department, and Congress should emphasize the importance of Europeans and the United Nations keeping lines of communication with Iran open and growing. Stakeholders on the global scene who have a proven track record of relative neutrality and bringing people together are best suited to bridge the gap between antagonistic parties. Moreover, making sure those lines of communication remain intact is particularly important so that America can capitalize on them when it has another team in the White House that is more inclined to resume direct diplomacy with Iran.

3) On Iran Policy, Widen the Group of Countries That America Talks To. Senior leaders from the executive and legislative branches of government should establish consultative mechanisms with non-traditional friendly countries that meet regularly to discuss Iran policy. At a time of increasingly dangerous tensions in the region, it is important for America to listen to a greater number of ideas and actors to avoid getting misled by self-interested countries or an Iranian version of Ahmed Chalabi. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE clearly have their own agendas – and they do not always align with what is in the national interest of the United States. In addition to traditional discussion partners in the region, America should institutionalize dialogue on Iran policy with Japan, South Korea, and India.

By avoiding dependence on Saudi, Israeli, and Emirati views, Washington will increase the likelihood of getting much needed balance and nuance in its Iran perspective and policy-making. Tokyo, Seoul, and New Delhi have unique points of view on the region and how to best address its challenges, which in turn can help inform American efforts. Moreover, including them in an institutionalized consultative mechanism provides a sense of partnership and vested interest to other actors, so they take the process of offering advice and assistance more seriously and bring something tangible to the table—from intelligence access to diplomatic contacts to economic and military influence.

If Trump follows through with his threat to kill the JCPOA, he will have manufactured a crisis on an issue that was previously resolved. In doing so, the chances of war will go up exponentially—particularly because Trump has abandoned nearly all forms of direct communication with Iran, thereby increasing the likelihood of miscommunication, misperception, and miscalculation. America may choose to needlessly erode its credibility, but there is no reason for Europeans to follow suit on this bridge to nowhere. Their noble efforts to bridge the United States-EU divide on Iran may yet succeed—but at present, they are more likely to fail. With that in mind, Europe must prepare itself to step up and assume the responsibilities for diplomacy and peace with Iran that Trump’s team looks set to abdicate.

Reza Marashi is research director at the National Iranian-American Council. He previously served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Atlantic, and National Interest. On Twitter: @rezamarashi.

Situated in the grandiose, newly opened Mall of Egypt, Ski Egypt offers skiing sessions and lessons to adults and children at prices ranging from 200 Egyptian Pounds to 855 Egyptian Pounds (roughly $12 to $47). These are not cheap entrances for the vast majority of Egyptians. Ski Egypt, like the Magic Planet and Vox Cinemas companies, are all exact replicas of attractions in Dubai’s famed mega-malls. The fascination of skiing—of white and bright snow surrounded by endless sand and unfinished construction landscapes—is certainly catching. The mirage-like Mall of Egypt is a surreal construction, lost in the vast space of the desert in Cairo’s satellite city, the Sixth of October.

When you visit, you keep asking yourself: Why are so many wealthy Arabs mesmerized by the simulacra of mini-Switzerlands, of artificial snow landscapes in the confined spaces of closed-up, glassed-in malls all over the Middle East? Does the sensation of skiing on artificial snow in compulsory gloves provide a sensual, self-elevating feeling of “conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous consumption,” so strikingly prophesied by the late sociologist Thorstein Veblen as the grand malaise of modernity?

Anything that is rare is highly desired, and in Egypt nothing is more available than sand. Snow is just the opposite. Why has the insatiable desire to mimic Dubai, the “Arab Riviera,” the dream world of abundance, luxury, milk and honey, become so imperative since 2011? The neoliberal powers seem to regard this kind of development as an urgently needed facelift after the troubled years of the Arab revolutions, the devastating civil wars, the unprecedented massive migration of refugees to Europe, the acute humanitarian disaster of the greatest population displacements in modern history, and the emergence of the threat of ISIS on a global scale.

When you enter a Cairene mall, forget all about the Weight of World (the famed work by the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on contradictory behaviour regarding class disparities). Just keep on strolling through the endless kilometers of shops, cafes, restaurants, and what not, and keep on staring, for life there looks different from the one you know. And if you visit the Mall of Egypt, don’t lose yourself watching people wearing rented winter jackets and gloves for playing in the snow, and don’t be mesmerized by the mass of digital photographs of the people skiing and playing in the snowy hall, displayed on computers nearby. Take the escalator one floor up; observe the poorer visitors with their children who can’t afford the entrance tickets. Do the poor get satisfaction by staring for hours at the other people through the huge window? Window shopping still costs nothing, and so far no entrance ticket to the mall itself is required.

I have observed in my previous work that as far back as the early 2000s, Cairo boasted several gargantuan shopping malls, such as City Stars, located near the airport, to attract tourism from the Gulf. In spite of the growing poverty that could not be halted by the neoliberal policies of the Mubarak regime, consumer culture was booming, benefiting some people, but certainly not all. This was reflected in the spread of mobile phones, the fast food industry, home delivery, a flourishing local fashion industry, the multiplication of Carrefour and other hypermarkets. With the speed of the internet, Facebook and other social media became consumer goods. Also since the early 2000s, the Emirati Majid al-Futtaim group extended their financial empire by building numerous gigantic malls not only in Egypt but across the Middle East. In response, nearly a decade ago, I wrote that the Middle East was suffering from the construction of a racial segregation wall around Israel, and that the horrific war in Iraq was happening simultaneously with the opening of more new mega-malls in Dubai and in a number of cities in the Gulf. Also more than a decade ago, a snow city and an ice rink in a shopping mall in Cairo’s Nasr City were simultaneously erected and celebrated. And yet, the shopping Mall was quickly shut down because snow cities and ice rinks were not sustainable financially.

So what´s really new about these current mega-malls? In effect what´s really new about Cairo’s imitation of Dubai?

The number of malls has more than quadrupled during the past decade in Cairo’s suburbs of New Cairo,  Sixth of October, and Sheikh Zayed. These malls replicate in standardized, monotonous shapes. It is this sameness that creates a semblance of democracy, so that we can all feel elevated to dream of being elsewhere, as long as we are in the confines of the mall, while in reality we remain in Cairo. This mesmerizing replicability has been led by the Majid al-Futtaim group in the Middle Eastern cities of  Beirut, Sharjah, Bahrain, Alexandria, and Muscat.

Middle Eastern countries have now entered a race over which Arab country has the biggest mall in the world. This also means that the next generation of malls will be even larger. Today, the Al-Futtaim group runs 21 huge shopping malls. They advertise their success story on their website by claiming that these spaces welcome 178 million visitors annually. They also boast that they employ over 40,000 people, and enjoy “the highest credit rating (BBB) among privately-held corporates in the region.” This pride in extreme dimensions verges on megalomania.

However, a major question seems to be formulating itself: How should one experience, or rather read, these replicable, multipliable spaces of leisure after millions took to the street demanding bread, freedom, and social justice? The juxtaposition of these hyperspaces to Cairo’s sprawling slums will certainly not remove the latter, nor will it eliminate the robust Cairene street life of the old central neighborhoods. And what about the impact of the Malls, on the majority of Egyptians, of the soaring economic crisis after the severe devaluation of the pound? How about the frightening decline of the economic power of the middle classes? If our forefathers, in theorizing on consumer culture, prophesied that modern man remains utterly discontented and unsatisfied, it is because precisely his desires have been over-aroused and mistaken for needs. And even if the act of mimesis is close to perfection, Cairo is still not quite Dubai and fortunately never will be.

The decisive question will be how these opposing lifestyles—the  wealthy skiers, of the multiple replicas of “New Cairos” of the desert satellite cities, versus the window watching “common folk” or sha’abi—will incite further dreams and desires for the have-nots. Clearly, the voyeur, the window shopper, the sha’abi common folk, will have to live with merely gazing at the wealthy skiers… but no one can be fooled with window shopping forever.

Mona Abaza is an Egyptian writer and professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo. Her most recent book is The Cotton Plantation Remembered: An Egyptian Family
 Story. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2013.