Egypt Priorities in Biden Middle East Visit: Op-ed

Dalia Ziada

Tomorrow will mark the first face-to-face interaction between the American President, Joseph Biden, and most of his Arab counterparts, including Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Egypt’s pressing political and economic concerns may not dominate a great part of the discussions in the Arab-American summit. However, it is important to identify those concerns as part of the recovering relationship between the United States and the Middle East countries.

The Egyptian president, in addition to the leaders of Iraq and Jordan, will join the GCC+3 summit alongside leaders from the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This exceptional regional summit, that will be attended by the American president, is organized and hosted by Saudi Arabia, the oldest U.S. ally in the Arab Gulf region that president Biden failed to ignore or marginalize as he previously promised his voters. The main theme of the summit is expected to be about what each party can offer to relief the concerns of the other.

On one hand, the Arab leaders will look into what the American president can offer to calm their anxiety about regional security threats, especially those related to Iran and its wide-spread militia. That includes reviving the frozen defense sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On the other hand, the U.S. president will look into what the Arab leaders, especially from the rich Gulf countries, can offer to mitigate the growing food and energy crisis in the western countries, as a result of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the United States has been pressuring Saudi Arabia and UAE to increase their oil production to help suppress the spiking prices of energy products in Europe.

While most observers have been focusing on the priorities of the U.S. and Arab Gulf countries from Biden’s first visit to the region, a few cares to ask about the priorities of Egypt. That is in spite of Egypt being one of the most important strategic partners to the United States in both the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean regions. Needless to mention is the growing profile of Egypt as a regional hub for natural gas production and exportation. Last month, Egypt and Israel signed a historic agreement of trade, transport, and export of natural gas with the European Union. It is not a secret that securing energy resources is one of the main topics that compelled the return of the American President to the region.

Nevertheless, Egypt looks at issues beyond handling the ongoing global energy and food crises, although Egypt is one of the countries suffering the most from their consequences. Of course, the Egyptian state is expecting better trade cooperation and economic support from the United States, to handle the current economic crisis, either directly through bilateral trade agreements or U.S. aid programs, or indirectly through supporting Egypt’s position at the international lending organizations.

Yet, Egypt also hopes that the United States, under the leadership of president Biden, returns to mediating in the conflict over the Nile River with Ethiopia. The former administration of President Trump played a crucial role in pressuring Ethiopians to sit with Egyptians and Sudanese to discuss the issue. At the same time, Egypt needs to understand the stance of the United States leadership towards the ongoing civil conflicts in Sudan and Libya, which affects Egypt’s national security and stability. That, also, includes making new armament deals and guaranteeing the flow of the annual U.S. military aid.

Realistically speaking, we cannot assume that Egypt’s concerns and priorities will be fully addressed or even prioritized in the GCC+3 Summit. It is unclear whether a one-on-one meeting will be held between Biden and El-Sisi, or they will simply sit around the large table of the Gulf Summit. The only direct communication between Biden and El-Sisi, over the past eighteen month, took place in the form of a thirty-minutes phone call to discuss the war in Gaza that erupted in May of last year.

But, in all cases, the long-delayed encounter between the American and the Egyptian presidents promises the break of the diplomatic ice blocks that the Biden Administration has been purposefully building against El-Sisi leadership, for a year and a half. Hopefully, this paves the way for re-setting the terms of cooperation between Egypt and the United States on regional issues of common interest, beyond the recurring pressures applied for improving state performance on human rights, which has not led to any tangible progress, so far.