Bands of young Sinai Bedouin have turned their backs on tribal affiliations in and formed lawless bands of jihadis which are highly vulnerably to Iranian and radical Palestinian penetration. Those bands carried out the twin attack on Egyptian and Israel military targets last Sunday.

In a radio interview Thursday, Aug. 9, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stoutly refuted reported disagreements between the US and Israel, and himself and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Both see eye to eye on the matter, he said, as do US and Israeli intelligence evaluations.  “A nuclear Iran is taking shape before our eyes” Barak stressed, and new US intelligence findings make a decision on a possible attack “extremely urgent."

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, in conjunction with military chief Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, fired a row of top military, intelligence and police officials Wednesday, Aug. 8, after more armed Islamist attacks on Egyptian troops. Morsi replaced Intelligence chief Gen. Mourad Mowafi with Maj. Gen. Mohamed Shehata, and fired the governor of North Sinai, Abdel Wahab Mabrouk, as well as other officials.  The president acted expeditiously to quell street protest over declining Sinai security but is not yet grappling with its root cause, Islamist terror.

The new Egyptian president is trying to carve out a niche for himself independent of his own Muslim Brotherhood. For this he needs to make terms with the Supreme Military Council. It is too early to determine his chances of success.

Israel was taken aback by US President Barack Obama’s invitation to Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi - in breach of Obama's assurances to US Jewish leaders, debkafile reports. His key assurance was not to invite Mursi to the White House until the Egyptian president met certain conditions, the foremost of which was a public and specific statement of Egypt's commitment to its 1979 peace treaty with Israel as a central theme in Morsi's earliest foreign policy speech.

President Morsi’s respect for the peace treaty with Israel and respect for minority and religious rights will determine whether he is received at the White House, gains the $1.5 bn US aid package, and its help in releasing funds to buy food for the population.

The Brotherhood is snatching the main cabinet posts including prime minister from President Morsi’s grasp and conniving against him with the Supreme Military Council. The new president is trying to break free of its shackles.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt will have pushed aside Iran and energy as top issues when Monday, June 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin on a short visit to Israel meets Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. On this at least they have common ground:  The Muslim Brotherhood governments rolling out along Middle East shores with US encouragement – Libya, last year; Egypt, yesterday; and Syria, tomorrow – are seen as a threat to regional stability rivaling even the menace of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has achieved the goal set at its foundation 84 years ago: Its candidate Muhammed Morsi was declared Sunday afternoon, June 24, president of Egypt, with a 51.73 percent win over Ahmed Shafiq, former prime minister under the ousted Hosni Mubarak. Jubilant Brotherhood supporters massed in Tahrir Square are preparing to fight the Supreme Military Council to transfer the sweeping powers assumed by the generals to the president and back him in Egypt’s transformation into an Islamic republic akin to Iran.

Al Qaeda infiltrators from Libya are spearheading much of this month’s anti-Israel violence from Sinai and the Gaza Strip - a dangerous development Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the US prefer to conceal. It appears to tie in with the arrival of al Qaeda’s ex-Iraq fighters in Syria as part of its leader's master plan. Deeply concerned to check the spillover from Libya into Egypt, Cairo has posted its elite counter-terrorist “999 unit” in El Arish, on Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and along the northern sector of its frontier with Israel.

Field Marshal Tantawi and presidential contestant Ahmed Shafiq both made tracks to Riyadh this week for succor and support against the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of power in Cairo. Both were also going against US plans for supporting that takeover.

With no clear winner, Egypt is falling into two ...

The combination of lawless Sinai under the control of Bedouin bands, al Qaeda and Salafist militias and Cairo ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood is the recipe for strife between Israel and Egypt.

At a particularly sensitive moment in Israeli-Egyptian relations, Israel’s military leaders were caught napping by the June 18 terrorist attack from Sinai on the southern Route 10, in which an Israeli fence team worker was killed. Because they were too slow to catch on to the identity of the perpetrators (al Qaeda), those military chiefs aimed their reprisals at the wrong quarters (Hamas and Jihad Islami) and so set off a three-day, still ongoing missile-for-air strike cycle in Gaza.
Egyptian liaison officers meanwhile refuse to meet Israeli commanders.

Islamist candidate Muhammad Mursi did not wait for the ballots to be counted before proclaiming himself President of Egypt. Shafiq’s protest that final results were not in was drowned out by street celebrations preparing the masses to confirm the Brotherhood win. The Netanyahu government did not oppose Obama’s policy of bringing Muslims to power through the ballot box and now faces Moslem adversaries from a strategic pit. To recover its deterrent effectiveness, Israel must dismantle Iran’s nuclear program by force.

Egypt’s transitional military government assumes legislative powers after the constitutional court Thursday, June 14, dissolved parliament because one-third of its seats were gained illegally in an election which handed two Islamist parties a majority. Egyptians found they face a new general election two days before they vote in the presidential runoff.  The court also ruled that Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, would stay in the presidential race.

The Brotherhood's Islamist militias, which first put in an appearance in Egypt's presidential election campaign last month to disrupt Ahmed Shafiq's rallies, quickly took on a national character. They then formed into hierarchical structures on the lines of the paramilitary militias which surfaced in the early years of Iran’s Shiite revolution in the early 1980s and evolved into Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Muslim Brotherhood lost substantial ground between Egypt’s general and presidential elections round one. The emergence of the two frontrunners, the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and former PM Ahmed Shafiq, has cast the original revolutionaries and pro-democracy elements onto the sidelines.

Results of the final round of the presidential vote in Egypt depends on two things: The candidates’ ability to organize their campaigns and funding from the Arab world and American sources.

Egyptian Sinai is being turned into a lawless wasteland and jihadi recruiting center by the influx of al Qaeda fighters from across the Muslim world. Al Qaeda in Sinai is preparing to open a new front for terror in the western Middle East.

General Omar Suleiman was gulled into throwing his hat in the presidential ring by two generals who needed a fig leaf for disqualifying the two Islamist contenders for the presidency.