Omar Suleiman, the late Egyptian intelligence minister, who was the strongman in ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime and the person whom the Muslim Brotherhood dreaded, once met with a delegation of Israeli Knesset members, explaining to them how he was able to suppress the Brotherhood movement.

It’s not much of a problem for us, Suleiman related. If I get the right means and the right budget, I can overcome it. You need to want it and have the money. On a different occasion, Suleiman told his Israeli interlocutors that he couldn’t understand Israel’s great hesitation in releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for freeing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Let them go free now, then apprehend them and later kill them. That shouldn’t be a big problem for you, he said.

This was his worldview. As Mubarak’s whip against the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, Suleiman enabled the Egyptian president to keep the faltering country afloat and even achieve significant economic growth during the last years of his rule. During those dozens of years, the regime would call an “election” every few years which was a total sham. After a day or two the “results” would be announced: The Egyptian people once again voted in droves for the ra’is (ruler), and everything turned out well. It seems to me that if the current events continue their present course, it won’t be long before the Egyptians start missing Mubarak, and also Suleiman. And not just them. We will miss them too, as will the Americans.

What’s funny is that during all those Mubarak and Suleiman years, the United States supported the Egyptian regime, viewing it as a strategic partner. Egypt was a pivotal American ally in the Middle East, serving as a significant anchor for US interests and being an instrumental stabilizing factor. Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, called Mubarak “the rock” of the Middle East — the only real thing you could rely on when you wanted to placate the region or maintain some kind of sanity. This was the unassailable truth.