Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Lining up behind Nabil al-Araby for Egyptian president.  It was reported last week that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) had agreed on Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby as their preferred ‘accord’ candidate for Egypt’s presidency.  The news caused something of a stir when it was reported that al-Araby was being pushed forward by outside interests, particularly Arab Gulf states who might be using financial incentives to get their way.  But if al-Araby does indeed emerge as the preferred candidate, it would be as well to remember the upset felt in Egypt when he was removed from his post as Egypt’s first post-revolution foreign minister and appointed to the Arab League.  This was widely seen as a evidencing Western pressure to water down Egypt’s post-revolution foreign policy.

The key point about al-Araby’s short tenure as Egyptian foreign minister was the way in which he quickly re-oriented Egyptian foreign policy back towards a traditional Egyptian one of seeking Arab leadership - and the strong approval this received both within Egypt and the wider Arab world.  In one of his first moves as foreign minister, on 28 April, al-Araby announced that the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza would be reopened on a permanent basis.  Six weeks later, on 12 June, he also said that “Iran is not an enemy of Egypt”, but he added that the decision to resume diplomatic relations will be left to the new Egyptian parliament, thereby neatly sidestepping US objections.

*** Another signal from Hezbollah’s Nasrallah.  In last week’s issue we looked at remarks made on 7 February by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in which he said “Iran does not command us”.  This was being taken in Israel as a sign that Hezbollah was running scared and would not launch a retaliatory attack in response to an Israeli strike against Iran.  Now, in a televised speech on 16 February, Nasrallah has denied a Hezbollah role in the attempted attacks against Israeli targets in Georgia, India, and Thailand.  Admittedly he wrapped up his denial in bravado, saying it would be “humiliating for Hezbollah to take revenge for its great jihadist leader [Imad Mughniyeh] through killing ordinary Israeli people”, but Israeli intelligence analysts believe it is another signal from Nasrallah that he does not want to get involved in the looming confrontation between Israel and Iran - or at least that is how the hawks are interpreting it.

*** More Russian concerns.  On 21 February, the secretary-general of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolay Bordyuzha, said that the creation of a US anti-drug unit in Kazakhstan “pursues nothing but purely political goals”.  He said that the initiative “involves the creation of special units with the participation of US intelligence in the territories of CSTO member states”.