Why Washington Paid Egypt in Full While Israel Panics Over a Sinai Railway

Some readers shrugged at the news, since Egypt receives aid every year. Others were outraged that Washington would release money tied to human rights while Egypt still holds journalists. Both reactions miss the point. Politics runs on interests, and this administration is the most cost-cutting in modern American memory. It has slashed foreign aid and squeezed State Department programmes, and it has even talked about trimming aid to Israel, all while paying for a war with Iran that has cost billions. When that administration chooses to hand Egypt every dollar it used to withhold, the payment is a judgment about Egypt’s value. (Silent Dossier has looked at how Washington’s conditions on Egypt’s aid were explained under the previous administration.)

Egypt is part of the Iran war whether its critics like it or not, and it took part without firing a shot. Four contributions explain Rubio’s letter.

The first is access. For decades, the expedited Suez Canal passage for US warships and the overflight rights for American fighters and transport aircraft that came with the US–Egypt partnership after Camp David looked like relics. In peacetime, Washington asked what those privileges were worth: why should an American ship not simply wait its turn in the canal? A war with Iran answered the question. Moving forces and supplies toward the Gulf without fast canal transit and open Egyptian skies would be far slower and harder.

The second is intelligence. Egyptian intelligence keeps lines open to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and to the Houthis in Yemen, and it shares what it learns with the CIA. That channel became valuable the moment the shooting started.

The third is mediation. Qatar and Oman are the usual go-betweens between Washington and Tehran, but in this war Iran also sent its terms through Cairo. On September 20, CIA Director John Ratcliffe met President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo as Egypt worked to narrow the gap between the US and Iran on the terms for ending the war, and he thanked Egypt for its “pivotal role.” When the head of the CIA comes to your capital to work on a message from Iran, you are not a bystander.

The fourth is energy. With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapsing, Egypt’s SUMED pipeline from Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean gave Saudi crude a way out. Flows through SUMED jumped by about 150% after the conflict began. Saudi oil reached Europe through Egypt, and Asian tankers, Chinese ships above all, loaded it at Sidi Kerir. That helped keep oil prices from spiralling.

Egypt was never in Iran’s camp. It offered every service short of war to calm the region and end the fighting. Donald Trump, who calls Sisi a friend and went out of his way to praise him and “strong” Egyptians at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit last year, understands that language. Washington speaks the language of interests, and releasing military aid at this moment is how it says that Egypt is a strong ally. That message irritates Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. It irritates Israel more.

Terrorism in Sinai has been beaten back, but no region ever eliminates it completely. Terrorism is an idea, and ideas do not die. What defeats them is development, more than promises, cash handouts or good intentions. Hosni Mubarak wanted to develop Sinai, and nothing came of it. Intentions are not the point; implementation is. A railway that moves Sinai’s marble, cement and raw materials to Cairo faster and more cheaply than the sea lets quarries grow and creates jobs. A man with work and a wage is a poor recruit: when a militant tries to sell him an extremist idea, he asks why he should throw away his livelihood. A man with nothing is the one who picks up a gun. This is not a charge against the people of Sinai. It is how development starves a deviant minority of recruits.

That is precisely what Israel does not want. Look at where it has gone into Lebanon: the south, a zone of Hezbollah, instability and an absent state. Israel values empty spaces. As long as Sinai stayed empty and undeveloped, Israeli strategists could believe they might one day return to it. Every station and every job in Sinai ends that illusion. Development hurts Israel more than any bullet could.

There is a second reason for the panic. In September 2023, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the EU and others announced the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Goods would sail from India to the UAE, cross Saudi Arabia and Jordan by rail into Israel, and leave from Haifa for Europe. Israel saw the project as the commercial backbone of the Abraham Accords, with itself as the indispensable last link.

A railway from the Suez Canal to Taba reduces that importance. It does not end IMEC, but it gives traders an alternative. Jordan does not need a ship to reach Taba from Aqaba; a ferry will do. From Taba, cargo can go by train to Cairo, Suez or Arish and onward by sea, without touching Israel. Gulf cargo can take the same route. Given the choice between that and a route through a country at war with itself, planning to displace Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, Arab governments have every reason to prefer the Egyptian line.

It also strengthens the Suez Canal instead of competing with it. When the Bab el-Mandeb is threatened, ships can unload at Arish and send their cargo overland to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and rail on a fast, flat line beats the sea. Egypt is no longer betting everything on one waterway. It is building a second route that feeds the first. For Israel, that spoils a project it treated as the opportunity of a generation.

Israel will not leave Egypt alone. This week Yedioth Ahronoth urged Israel to watch the confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea closely and to treat it as an opportunity. Ethiopia’s army is pushing into Tigray, carrying its own bridges because Eritrea has destroyed most of the crossings between the two countries, and Ethiopian government forces are now advancing on Mekelle. Abiy Ahmed wants a coastline and is determined to fight Eritrea for it if he must. An Ethiopia on the Red Sea would be a gift to Israel. Abiy is ready to rent out his army: in return for money, Ethiopian troops would take on the Houthis on Israel’s behalf, a mercenary bargain in all but name. If Ethiopia stalls on the Eritrean border, Abiy may ask Israel for help.

But Eritrea is not alone. Since the 2024 Asmara summit, it has been bound to Egypt and Somalia in a security alliance, and Cairo has its own reasons to stand up to Addis Ababa.