Egypt Fires a Warning Shot at Iran

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Growing tensions between Iran and the moderate autocracies of the Sunni Arab world spiked this week when Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak accused the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hizballah of plotting his overthrow. Earlier this month, Egypt had announced the arrest of 49 suspects it claimed had been part a Hizballah cell planning attacks against Israelis vacationing on the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian officials threatened to prosecute Hizballah leaders including the movement's chieftain, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah countered that just one of the men arrested had been a Hizballah member, whose mission had simply been sending weapons to Hamas fighters in Gaza. (That was a message carefully crafted for Arab public opinion, which had been sharply critical of Mubarak and other leaders for failing to help the besieged Gazans during Israel's recent offensive.) The Egyptian President upped the ante, Thursday, declaring that the mission of the Hizballah cell had, in fact, been to destabilize the Egyprian government. Cue hissing noises from all sides, and the dispatch of Arab League President Amir Moussa for pointless mediation talks in Beirut on Saturday.

Flare-ups are increasingly commonplace these days in an Arab world divided between states and movements inclined to confront Israel — Hamas, Syria, and Hizballah — and those who generally back U.S. policy in the region — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas. Increasingly, the focus of such inter-Arab temper tantrums isn't resistance to Israel, but to Iran. (See photographs of Hizballah's youth movement)

It's highly unlikely that Hizballah had been planning to topple the Mubarak regime. The militant group has proved so dangerous and effective precisely because it usually focuses its destructive power on fighting Israel, and only Israel — exceptions made when it feels it's under attack from rivals on its own turf. Nor does it seem likely that they were trying to hit Israeli targets in Egypt, a violation of an Arab country's sovereignty that would hurt Nasrallah's play to be seen as a leader of the Arab world. To be sure, the Egyptians don't seem to be taking that supposed threat too seriously themselves, as TIME Jerusalem bureau chief Tim McGirk discovered when he spent his Passover holiday in the Sinai at the height of the Hizballah alarm, and found the Egyptian security services were conspicous mostly by their absence.

But there's no doubt that Egypt and America's other Sunni Muslim allies are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing influence of of Shia Iran. With Egypt and Jordan formally at peace with Israel and Saudi Arabia closely tied to Washington, Iran has taken the lead in the politically popular fight against Israel by supporting Hamas and Hizballah. And since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 2003 removed Tehran's major Arab enemy, Iranian influence has spread throughout the Middle East as never before. And now that the Obama Administration is launching the most serious U.S. effort to engage the Islamic Republic since the revolution 30 years ago, the fears of politically brittle Arab regimes such as Egypt's have reached a hysterical pitch.

Nasrallah's response to Mubarak was smart, because resistance to Israel is very popular on the Egyptian street, where many saw their own government's response to events in Gaza as wholly inadequate — or worse. Many Egyptians were outraged when their government kept border crossings into Gaza closed during the Israeli offensive that killed more than a thousand Palestinians.

Mubarak is likely to back off for now, rather than risk a popularity contest between himself and Nasrallah, which the Egyptian leader would be unlikely to win. Besides, it's too soon for an open confrontation. The region is waiting to see the outcome of Iran's presidential election in June, to assess the intentions of Israel's hawkish new Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu, and for Obama's diplomatic efforts to take their course. But Mubarak has fire a warning shot, and the increasingly complex equation involving the U.S., Israel, the Palestinians, moderate Arab regimes and Iran could yet turn into one messy scrap.