Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on Trump-Sisi Relationship
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on the developing relationship between United States President Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “The Mood in Washington About Sisi is Mixed,” was published on April 9, 2017 in The Arab Weekly.
From the text of the article:
After being denied an official Washington visit by former president Barack Obama, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received the respect he likely believes he deserves from meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Although Obama never labelled Sisi’s 2013 overthrow of former president Muhammad Morsi a coup, which would have legally required him to cut off US aid, he saw Sisi’s policies as unnecessarily harsh.
Bilateral relations improved somewhat after Obama restored full military aid to Egypt in March 2015, after having suspended much of it in October 2013, but he and Sisi never had a warm relationship.
Not so it seems with Trump. Following their meeting at the UN General Assembly last September, Trump and Sisi seem to have developed a close bond. Trump called Sisi a “fantastic guy” and the Egyptian president was the first foreign leader to congratulate Trump after his victory in November.
Aftandilian also recently participated in a conference at the University of Southern California on April 9-10, 2017 entitled “End of Transition: Armenia 25 Years On, Now What?” where he delivered the paper, “The Diminishing Importance of of Armenia in U.S. Foreign Policy”.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).