The Trump administration has waived human rights conditions on $320 million in military aid to Egypt, citing Cairo’s importance to U.S. national security amid the Iran war, even as rights advocates argue Washington is surrendering leverage over a government that continues to jail its critics and journalists.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the waiver memo on Sept. 4, and the State Department formally notified Congress on Sept. 21. Then, this week, Egyptian authorities detained six journalists from Matsadaash, an independent media outlet.
Rubio approved the waiver for the fiscal 2025 funding under national security authority provided by Congress, a State Department spokesperson told MBN.
“The Secretary’s determination reflects the importance of Egypt to U.S. national security interests, and the concrete security cooperation Egypt provides to the United States,” the spokesperson said.
The $320 million is conditioned on Egypt respecting human rights and democratic practices, and withholding it has been a repeated source of tension between Cairo and Washington. Former President Joe Biden withheld portions of the funding before releasing the full allocation in 2024, citing Cairo’s role in efforts to end the Gaza war.
September’s waiver sets aside those conditions and shows how much weight Washington now places on Cairo, whose security cooperation the State Department spokesperson called important “at a time of significant regional security challenges.”
Egypt is also one of the world’s top jailers of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Egypt currently holds 25 journalists behind bars, including the journalists detained this week, the press freedom organization said.
Earlier this week, Egyptian authorities detained six journalists from Matsadaash, whose name means “Don’t Believe It” in Arabic. CPJ said Friday that the journalists’ whereabouts remained unknown and called for their release.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry has accused the outlet of spreading false information and linked it to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, an allegation denied by the outlet’s co-founder, Abdelrahman Mansour.
“We have no affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the authorities know this,” Mansour told CPJ.
“Our journalists deserve recognition for their work,” he added. “Instead, they have been held for more than 72 hours, their whereabouts unknown, without access to their families or our lawyers.”
Security Assistance
The memorandum signed by Rubio cited Egypt’s “helpful role” following the launch of the U.S. military campaign against Iran, Reuters reported Thursday.
The memorandum did not explain that role.
Asked by MBN what Washington needed from Egypt at this stage of the conflict with Iran, the State Department also did not identify specifics.
Egypt has long allowed U.S. military overflights and given U.S. warships priority passage through the Suez Canal. The relationship also supports Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, a central element of U.S. policy in the region for decades.
In an April analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Angie Omar, the editor in chief of the think tank’s Sada publication, also described Egypt’s reported use of intelligence channels to relay messages between Washington and Tehran to help clarify each side’s red lines.
Long Dispute
The conflict over Egypt’s rights record and aid predates the Trump administration. Multiple U.S. administrations have wrestled with how to press Egypt to improve its human rights record while preserving military and diplomatic ties.
Seth Binder, director of policy and government relations at the American Committee for Middle East Rights, said Washington did not have to choose between maintaining those ties and withholding conditioned assistance.
“We know this because at various times both the Biden and first Trump administrations withheld a portion of military aid to Egypt and it had zero tangible or demonstrable negative consequences on cooperation or the relationship,” Binder told MBN, adding that the leverage the aid provided had helped secure the release of thousands of political prisoners.
But even without the $320 million, Egypt would remain the second-largest recipient of U.S. Foreign Military Financing, Binder added. Egypt has received about $1.3 billion annually in U.S. military assistance since the 1980s.
Congressional Pressure
Asked how the administration balanced security cooperation against the human rights concerns Congress attached to the assistance, the State Department spokesperson said those issues remained part of its dealings with Cairo.
“We continue to engage the Egyptian government on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship,” the spokesperson said.
Binder said any Egyptian contributions to U.S. national security did not justify setting aside human rights conditions on U.S. military aid to Cairo, adding that the decision sent “an alarming message of full-throated support for the al-Sisi government, despite the continuing human rights crisis inside the country.”
Congress has a well-known catalog of human rights concerns in Egypt, he said, “including press freedom and wrongful detention, and it should be re-upping these calls.”
