Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was received by President Macron on December 7 in Paris during his state visit to France.
This visit follows Macron's visit to Egypt in January 2019. France and Egypt maintain a strong strategic and military relationship in the context of particularly acute crises in the Near and Middle East region. Since the liquidation of the nationalist current embodied by A. G. Nasser, who was a leader of the non-aligned movement, Egyptian rulers have followed US and Western imperialism, France included.
This policy led to the recognition of Israel in February 1980 and the closure of the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, isolating part of the Palestinian people in a ghetto, which greatly facilitates Israel's expansionist and colonial policy. In 2013, the popular revolts against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood who came to power following the 2012 elections after the popular riots against the Mubarak regime, paved the way for al-Sisi, who was then Minister in the government of Mr. Morsi. Al-Sisi, strengthens his power by a bloody repression against the Muslim Brotherhood but more generally against all opponents. He ordered the army to put down the hunger revolts, in a particularly degraded economic situation. He quickly expressed his commitment towards a Western alliance and Egypt acquired several dozen Rafales aircraft to supplement its military equipment.
In the Libyan conflict in which France played a major role, he took a position of support for the government of the East (government of Benghazi) headed by Marshal K. Haftar. This Marshal is supported by France, Russia and the Arab quartet (United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria) against the Government of National Union of Tripoli which has the support of the UN and which is supported in particular by the USA and Turkey (1). The latter plays a particularly active role in Libya, positioning itself in the search for access to oil and gas resources in Libya, but more generally in the Mediterranean and in the Caucasus with its commitment to support Azerbaijan during the recent conflict against Armenia. The France-Egypt alliance is therefore first and foremost marked by the desire of the two countries to strengthen their relations in order to deal with Turkish expansionism in the Mediterranean. It is an imperialist alliance to counter Turkish and Iranian aims, even though, as second-tier imperialist powers, their own interests are divergent. Let us add that as a backdrop for France, there is the will to continue to "exist" in a region where the greatest imperialist powers clash, often by proxy, using countries and / or mercenary armies.