The U.S. Should Not Be Egypt’s Accomplice

Donald Trump drew lots of criticism during the campaign for his unceasing praise of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. His laudatory words for another despot, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, attracted less attention, though they could well signal a dangerous shift in American policy.

After Mr. Trump met the Egyptian leader in New York last September, around the same time Hillary Clinton did, he called Mr. Sisi a “fantastic guy” with whom he enjoyed strong “chemistry.”

At the time, Cairo very likely saw those meetings as a bid to repair relations with Washington after a tumultuous period in Egypt. It included an uprising that overthrew a dictatorship in 2011, a brief phase of democratic rule that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and a military coup in 2013 that overthrew the Brotherhood and paved the way for more repression.

As Mr. Sisi cracked down on the Islamists — including a 2013 massacre of protesters that killed more than 800 people — the Obama administration and Congress reassessed Washington’s alliance with Egypt.

To register its alarm over Egypt’s worsening human rights abuses, the United States suspended delivery of a modest amount of military aid and rescinded a preferential form of financing that allowed Cairo to submit orders for costly items under the assumption that Congress would continue to authorize $1.3 billion in yearly military assistance aid in perpetuity.

Now the Egyptian government is likely to find friendlier interlocutors in Washington. Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, was in Washington recently to lay the groundwork for a visit Mr. Sisi is hoping to make soon. American officials anticipate that Egypt’s wish list will be ambitious. The Sisi government wants the financing system restored and the modest amount of military funding that is still being withheld disbursed soon.

The Trump administration may see Mr. Sisi as an ideal partner in fighting the Islamic State and other extremists. The White House is reportedly considering designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Mr. Sisi, a former military general, has vowed to reform Islam from within through a “religious revolution” that purges extremists. But his tactics have been draconian and counterproductive. His government has persecuted violent and nonviolent Islamist groups with equal zeal and without due process. It has maligned and harassed human rights activists, rendering their work all but impossible. And it has smothered what remains of the political opposition. Last week, Egypt’s Parliament, which is subservient to Mr. Sisi, expelled a prominent lawmaker who had been critical of the government’s crackdown on civil society — Anwar Sadat, the nephew of the former Egyptian president assassinated by Islamists.

The United States needs to be able to work with Egypt. But Washington should not make any more concessions without real reforms in Egypt’s approach to human rights and governance.

Before talks between the two governments advance, Egypt should be required to release Aya Hijazi, an American-Egyptian humanitarian worker who has been arbitrarily detained in Cairo since 2014.

Mr. Trump has encouraged brutal, anti-democratic leaders in the Philippines, Turkey and, of course, Russia. Doing so in Egypt would fuel radicalization and discontent in the most populous nation in the Arab world.

An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly described the American aid that Egypt wants restored. It is a modest amount of military funding, not weapons.