The crisis of lack of water is bigger, who ever bombs the shit out of Great Renaissance Dam is going to be popular in Egypt.

Egypt more than one occasion came close to doing something like that. Long story short. Who ever has better military capabilities will own the Nile.

Egypt can use Suez as another piece to get Europe to accept its bombing campaign.

> who ever bombs the shit out of Great Renaissance Dam is going to be popular in Egypt.

Would they? GERD destruction = tsunami on the nile, possibly setting a chain reaction through downstream dams.

Sisi has now managed to beat even Murbarak on getting the lowest rating on record from any semblance of legit polls done nowadays.

Turkey is all over Ethiopia, and Sudan on top of that. And Sisi has a paranoid fear of Turkish involvement, either back home as a subversion, or a direct attack from Turkish African bases.

Turkey staring Sisi down from all sides is by far a much bigger concern to him than Ethiopians waving their MiG 21s at him.

If he has a gram of gray matter, he will not push Ethiopians further towards decision on Turkish military base.

That is really old news. read the current situation between Turkey and Egypt, which is actually getting better https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-egypt-diplomacy-id...

They face retaliations with the Aswan dam.

Egypt can not use Suez, because the US, Europe and Israel will intervene for sure on that particular case against Egypt and Egypt will lose for sure.

Israel will not intervene because it has a peace treaty with Egypt which is much more important than starting some stupid war on the behalf of foreign countries. Since the war with Egypt in 1956 Israel only had wars with entities which directly attacked Israel and even in 1956 there were some excuses due to attacks by the Fedayun that came from Egyptian area and to the fact that the Egyptian blockaded the entranc to the Israeli port on the red sea.

If anything they will just dig a canal or create some route from Eilat port to Ashdod port and make some profit out of the whole situation.

Egypt doesn't have the capability. Their air force has too little range and too little refueling capability.

Not exactly. in these situations they would bomb the GERD then ditch, out of fuel, in international waters ready to be picked up or in Sudan. It's been done before. For really high value targets range doesn't matter as much.

Which means they couldn't maneuver at all at the attack site, making themselves extremely vulnerable; Furthermore, a dam is an highly fortified target by nature, making serious damage requires very heavy bombs, not sure they could make it even as a one way trip if they are properly armed.

IMHO, most likely result of an attack (for Egypt) is that Egypt loses a part of its airforce in return for temporarily harming Ethiopia's ability to generate electricity at the site. At which point Ethiopia fills the dam anyway and works on repairing the damage, while Egypt wouldn't be able to repeat this.

They could certainly maneuver at the attack site - there is very limited depth for Ethiopian defences as the dam is only ten miles from the Sudanese border.

But yes, the planes would be expendable. That said, Egypt could very well breach the dam itself. It would needs some creative use of munitions but modern munitions are precise enough to allow for breaching of dams.

That was the case before they bought the Rafale from France I guess

Why bomb a damn when you can hack it.

i dont think boombing the dam is a popular thing in egypt

The difference is, regardless of political divisions, everyone in Egypt totally understands that they are doomed without water. so the mentality there is slowly shifting towards "well, if we are dying anyway...."

I think a war with Ethiopia would help the Egyptian regime, assuming it went well. And it probably would because Egypt's military is the strongest in the region minus Israel.

The real question is what Sudan would do (probably lie down for the Egyptians).

Maybe Sudan would help Egypt. They use the Nile's water too.

They had a joint training Air force operation 2 days ago named "Nile Eagles"

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/egypt-sudan-hold-nile-e...

Ethiopia is probably the only nation in Africa that has not been dominated by foreign powers.

The reason is the topography. Ethiopia has lots of mountains, like Switzerland and it is painful to attack.

Any foreign nation helping Ethiopia could mean disaster for Egypt.

Controlling the entire Ethiopia would be a huge challenge, but the war objective in a fight over the Nile is much more limited in scope.

I suppose in war you never know. But the dam is 10 miles from the Sudanese border.

"Egypt's military is the strongest in the region minus Israel." and minus Turkey

If it becomes an existential threat to Egypt via the Nile drying up, then the Egyptian people themselves will want war.

No need to intervene in the ear of 5th gen wars, especially when Ethiopia effectively has a civil war going on.

Water is life or death. So they might have to try it.

Go block oil extraction in the Arab world and USA will be all over you...national interest.

> Go block oil extraction in the Arab world and USA will be all over you...national interest.

You mean like they did in the 70ies when the opec cartel cut oil production for political reasons? yeah...

not any more (vis USA and Arab world) - is the fifth fleet still there in persian gulf ?

Not anymore. The US is an oil exporting nation now.

> The US is an oil exporting nation now.

That is irrelevant. Oil is fungible. Block oil exports from the Middle East and the price of oil skyrockets worldwide including in the US.

Not necessarily.

From 1975 to 2015 the US had a law banning most crude oil exports from the US (aside from Canada and partially Mexico), effectively creating a separate North America-only oil market. It wouldn't take much for the US to reinstate this ban, meaning oil produced in the US stays in the US. And since the US is a net oil exporter, that means North American oil prices will stay low and stable.

As an oil exporting nation, rising oil prices are now good for the US!