A hot wind rolled in from the Mediterranean on 19 November. A few metres from the coast, a 330-tonne pressure vessel manufactured in St. Petersburg was being lowered into one of the four units of Egypt’s first nuclear power station in the north-west town of Al-Dabaa.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin looked on via video link and offered the tight, practised smiles of men who knew the cameras were rolling. In the background, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in blue caps scribbled notes, Chinese engineers filmed on their phones, and Egyptian army officers kept watch from shaded tents.
Years of multifaceted diplomacy culminated in the brief ceremony. It was a Russian pressure vessel being lowered into the reactor, and a Russian loan covering 85% of the $30bn project cost, but the inspectors guaranteeing that the reactor will never be weaponised were largely Western, and the grid that will one day carry the electricity to Egyptian cities is being wired by Chinese contractors.
Not picking sides
By working with Moscow, Beijing, and the West, Egypt has declared—more clearly than in any speech—that it is not ‘picking sides,’ but rather its ambitions are making different ‘sides’ pick Egypt. Gone are the thundering balcony speeches of Egyptian revolutionary leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, railing against imperialism while invoking Arab nationalism. This is different.
Abdel Nasser famously nationalised the Suez Canal, accepted Soviet missiles, and turned Cairo into the capital of the Third World. His non-alignment was romantic, ideological, but ultimately tragic, as Egypt was defeated in the 1967 War against Israel, leaving his doctrine and policies in tatters. Egypt spent the next six decades tethered to American aid and to financial support from all other countries and international institutions.
By contrast, el-Sisi's non-alignment version is colder, sharper, and infinitely more profitable. Where Abdel Nasser had to pick between Washington and Moscow, between East and West, el-Sisi refuses to do so. He joined the BRICS group alongside Russia, China, Iran, and the UAE in January 2024, signed infrastructure agreements with Beijing worth billions of dollars, accepted tens of billions of dollars in Gulf money since 2014, but continued collecting the annual $1.3bn military aid package from Washington, alongside the additional US arms sales worth billions more.
Political leverage
While Abdel Nasser’s old non-alignment was about pride, the new multi-alignment—designed and steered by el-Sisi—is about survival and political leverage. This seems to be working despite a lack of options and some heady problems. Red Sea shipping attacks have slashed Egypt’s vital Suez Canal revenues by about 60% while inflation only recently dipped below 12%.
On Egypt’s doorstep, there has been war and instability in Gaza, Sudan, and Libya, while the freshwater dispute with Ethiopia over the latter’s damming of the Nile River still simmers. Relations between Cairo and Washington hit a recent low when US President Donald Trump suggested that America turn Gaza into a Mediterranean beachfront resort, the implication being that the US and Israel would transfer (either forcibly or through incentives) two million Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.
In any other decade, these would all be existential crises, but in 2025, they are instead bargaining chips that Cairo is using to its best advantage. For instance, Rafah, the Egyptian city abutting Gaza, became a valuable Egyptian geopolitical asset because it gave Cairo the chance to control the crossing, regulate the flow of aid, prevent weapons from being smuggled in, and keep Islamist militants out.
Washington is well aware of all this, which is why the US Congress keeps waiving conditions attached to its military aid, and why the Pentagon keeps fast-tracking the supply of important spare parts, especially for F-16 jets. The moment Egyptian tanks appeared on the border with Gaza in April, Trump's "Riviera" idea was quietly dropped.
