Look, since the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia there was a field of competition between [Egypt and Saudi Arabia]. Let me give you an old example. Why is America now changing their traditional coalition from Pakistan to India? We are India. Egypt is India. Egypt has the larger population. [America] went to India because of its large population to place India against China. Egypt represents the same population weight of India so Egypt must be the most important factor in the Middle East equation even if it is a monetarily poor factor. Yet, Saudi Arabia is the traditional ally of America. In my opinion, Egypt is the most important and the most complicated factor in the region’s political equation. The population and geographical weights play a large role. Egypt became politically smaller because the political regime was crippled and weak and constrained by personal problems. [Mubarak] was not prepared to defend Egypt. He was defending his personal presence instead. When Americans were telling him, “Solve the problems of Ayman Nour.” So he was accepting anything they imposed upon him because he wanted to close these files. Today the new Egypt is a stronger Egypt than the previous regime. It will not be better than Mubarak’s regime on the economic level, but it will be better politically because it will have general support and the public opinion, which the government will base its decisions on. I expect Egypt to return to its former political position by virtue of its weight, like India, and also we are seeing that a lot of important factors in the Middle East equation are changing on the other side of the equation. I think the political situations in the Gulf area… I don’t want to say they will change, but they will develop. Actually, they will be changed. Egypt, Turkey, and Iran will be the strongest powers in the next era.

In 2008, you penned a famous letter to then-presidential candidate, Barack Obama. If you were to write a letter to President Obama today, what would be your message?

First of all, it was not a letter, but an article titled “Letter to Obama.” At that time there was a debate between [Hillary] Clinton and [Barack] Obama about what would happen if the President received a call at three in the morning about a crisis that threatened American interests in the Middle East and who would be prepared to answer that phone call. If I write Obama a message now, what I would tell him is, “All the phone calls you received at three a.m., four a.m., and five a.m. were never answered.” While Obama and Clinton are in the same administration, and they were originally asking who would take the phone call between them, but in fact the telephones are broken and they never answered any phone calls. From my viewpoint, the threat to the interests of the United States is the threat to the principles of the United States, which happens when freedoms are violated in this region. America made no moves. As a state that respects freedoms and human rights, the threat happened in many regions and is still happening in many regions. And we are still asking why don’t they ask the phone calls that ring at 3 a.m. in an administration with both Obama and Clinton. Obama disappointed us in some issues but Clinton has disappointed us in everything. The State Department always takes a worse position than the White House.

How do you grade Obama’s Administration over the last four years? Are you supporting his reelection?

Look, Obama reminds me of a 95-year old story about the American President, Woodrow Wilson, and this man [points to painting behind him], Saad Zaghloul, an Egyptian leader during Egypt’s 1919 revolution. In 1919, the Egyptian people chanted the names of Woodrow Wilson and Saad Zaghloul together. This was because Wilson wrote the “Fourteen Principles” [for the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War]. But, after a period of time, Wilson accepted the continued British occupation of Egypt. The people that previously chanted for Wilson then entered the streets calling for his downfall because he disappointed the people. This is my answer to that question.

Dr. Ayman Nour is an Egyptian politician and chairman of the Ghad El-Thwara Party. Eric T. Justin ’13, a Crimson former editorial executive, is a social studies concentrator in Currier House. He is taking the semester abroad to live and work in Egypt.