A poll of Egyptians conducted last month shows that they have increasingly positive views of Iran, believe that both Iran and Egypt should obtain nuclear weapons, and still trust their own military more than any other institution in Egypt. The poll of 812 Egyptians, half of them women, was conducted in a series of in-person interviews by the firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and sponsored by the Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy organization with offices in Washington and Jerusalem. According to the poll, Iran is viewed favorably in Egypt, with 65 percent of those surveyed expressing support of the decision to renew Egypt-Iran relations and 61 percent expressing support of the Iranian nuclear project, versus 41 percent in August 2009.Sixty-two percent of those polled agreed that "Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are friends of Egypt," though 68 percent held unfavorable views of Shiite Muslims.
| And do those Shiite Iranians think of themselves as Egypt's friends? They are, after all, the same people who sent those saboteurs over to blow up the Suez Canal or something a year or so ago, remember? |
| Brilliant: the reactors will be a joint Egyptian-Iranian construction project based on a Soviet design copied by the Chinese, handed off to the Norks, and improved by the Pakistanis. What could possibly go wrong? |
| Avi: "Ooooooh, targets! And we can watch them dig beforehand, too." |
"Very scary to people opposed to proliferation of nuclear weapons, let alone to unstable countries in the world's most turbulent part of the world, is the 87 percent who want Egypt to build nuclear weapons," he said. "Morsy's dangerous embrace of Iran is leading a surprising shift in favor support for Tehran, which has for decades been seen by Egyptians as their top threat, as well as for their work on nuclear weapons."
| Fortunately, for this ambition, as we saw in Syria, North Korea provides a turnkey operation, complete with technicians. So all that's needed is a great deal of money to pay for it all. |
| No worries, Uncle Sugar can provide that. It'll be called, "food aid"... |
| Like, for example, having enough foreign exchange to buy food... |
The poll found that 64 percent of Egyptians still feel warmly about the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ran Egypt in the interim period before Morsy was elected, and 81 percent approve of the job they are doing. Forty-nine percent of Egyptians polled felt warmly about Morsi, and 43 percent felt warmly about the Muslim Brotherhood.
Forty percent felt warmly about the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, but only 11 percent felt warmly about the Salafist Nour Party, a hard-line Islamist party that fared well in the parliamentary elections.
American politicians fared poorly in the poll, but among them Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the most popular at 25 percent favorability. President Barack Obama scored 16 percent and Republican nominee Mitt Romney only 8 percent, although only half of Egyptians polled knew who Romney was. (Ahmadinejad's favorability rating? Forty-three percent.)
Asked, "Do you think that President Barack Obama is more on the side of Arabs or more on the side of Israel?," 68 percent of Egyptians said Israel, and 60 percent said that Obama's presidency had been "a negative thing" for the Arab world.