CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met with newly appointed Defense Minister Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Zaki June 19 during their first one-on-one meeting since Zaki was sworn in. In a brief statement issued that day, the Egyptian presidency said that Sisi had received the new defense minister yet did not give details of the meeting.
The Egyptian government has witnessed a major reshuffle with the appointment of Zaki as defense minister and Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Tawfik as interior minister. This is in addition to other newly appointed ministers from military backgrounds, including Lt. Gen. Younis Hamed al-Masri who took office as the minister of aviation and Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Sayed Abdel Hamid Shaarawi who was appointed minister of local development after having served as chief of national security.
“It is clear that Sisi is not reassured and is apprehensive about the future. This is why he made the changes in the ministries of defense and interior. It seems that his circle of trust is falling apart. The pertinent question, however, is will this Cabinet reshuffle bring stability to the state institutions?” Hazem Hosny, a political science professor at Cairo University, said in a Facebook post June 14.
The appointment of a new defense minister comes amid a major military operation to combat terrorism launched by the Egyptian army in February as a response to a November 2017 terrorist attack on a mosque in southern Sinai. The attack killed more than 300 people. One month later, the ministers of defense and interior were targeted in a bloody attack during a visit to Al Arish International Airport in northern Sinai, which killed one officer and wounded two others.
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