Egyptian officials have arrested a member of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia militia-cum-party Hizbollah that officials claim was plotting terrorist attacks in Egypt in an effort to stir trouble in the nation on behalf of Iran so the world will be distracted by Iran’s accused effort to obtain nuclear weapons.

Iran has stated salient on the matter, while Hasan Nasrallah has finally broken Hizbollah’s silence in a speech where he claimed the arrested member as indeed a member of the party. Nasrallah though said the man was working on behalf of Palestinians, thus disputing the the claim of Egyptian officials. What is really going on here?

Is Iran intending to use Egypt as a distraction or is Egypt just trying to obstruct Hezbollah’s effort to aid the Palestinians via the nation?

It is not entirely outlandish to believe the Egyptian claim. The Iranian regime has both used terrorism before [it killed about 80 Jews in Argentina in the 1990s in an attack against the capital’s Jewish Community Center] and the nation has also no quarrels with fighting proxy wars on the land of others. Iran funds Hezbollah so as to remind Israel it can hit the Jewish state without ever endangering its own Iran. Both actions are repugnant, but the latter is particularly selfish. Iran wants to spare its nation, but apparently has no problem with plunging Lebanon into death and mayhem. This is cowardice. If Iran wants to fight Israel, it should do so on its own turf not ask the Lebanese to suffer for its own disputes with Israel. In other words: Iran has no problem with causing destruction in the second nations for its own benefit. The Egyptian could be right about Iran intending to use, say, Cairo as a distraction.

But then it could be that Egypt is simply worried that Hezbollah may seek to infiltrate Gaza through the Egyptian border via the Rafah crossing. If Hezbollah is successful in establishing a base in Gaza in tandem with Hamas it would only bring further scorn on the head of Egypt by both Israel and the United States. Egypt does not want Gaza to become even more of a crisis because as the Stripe is on the nation’s border it would cause even more of a headache for the nation. Egypt would have to employ more resources toward monitoring what is known as the Philadelphia corridor. Egypt also fears that Israel intends to drop Gaza into Egypt’s lap. This is the confederation idea that would deny the Palestinians a sovereign state by instead merging the West Bank into Jordan and Gaza into Egypt. A Hezbollah in Gaza would only increase fighting with Israel, increase the humanitarian crisis and even cause destabilization in the Sinai. Either way one cuts it, the last thing Egypt wants is the emergence of another militia in Gaza that would undermine stability in Gaza even more and cause even more trouble for Egypt as the nation would be blamed for not controlling its border and may increase the chances that Israel would seek to push Gaza in Israel.

So these are two scenarios. The Egyptians and the Iranians are not trustworthy, so would should not take their word as prima facie. As for Nasrallah, he did not deny the Hezbollah intends to set up a presence in Gaza. Though I doubt they do and I am certain that even if Iran wanted it, Nasrallah would not okay attacks against Egyptians.