The Egyptian military goes shopping

Gregg Carlstrom | July 5, 2009 3:07 PM | 0 | recommend (0) |   |      

The Jerusalem Post's Yaakov Katz has a bizarre article about the Egyptian military trying to purchase Russian-made air defense systems. Katz claims -- without a shred of evidence -- that Egypt is buying the weapons, S-300 and S-400 missile systems, as protection against a possible Iranian attack.

I'm not a military expert -- but this sounds fishy to me.

Egypt might be worried about other threats from Iran -- Hizballah sleeper cells, for instance. But I can't imagine the Egyptian military is concerned about a missile attack. If Iran launches missiles at anyone in the region -- a big "if" -- they're not going to shoot them over Israel and towards Cairo. That makes no sense.

So why is Egypt buying these weapons? There's the obvious answer, offered by The Arabist: Egypt is just bolstering its defenses against its traditional enemy (read: Israel).

But there's also this interesting paragraph buried in the article:

Iran has also been trying to acquire the S-300. Russian officials told Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his recent visit to Moscow that if Israel wanted to stop the sale it would need to buy the system in place of Iran or find an alternative customer.

Is Egypt the "alternative customer"? Remember, if Israel is planning a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, it has an incentive to keep the Iranians from acquiring air defense systems. So is the Israeli government quietly encouraging Egypt to buy these missile systems?

That would serve a dual purpose: It prevents Iran from buying the weapons, and it allows Israel to further hype the Iranian threat -- even Egypt is afraid of a potential Iranian attack!

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Categories: Egypt, Iran, Regional News, War and Terrorism

Tags: Hizballah, Iranian nuclear program

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