Mustafa Al-Fiqi, an Egyptian politician who held senior posts under Mubarak, including deputy foreign minister and chairman of the parliamentary foreign relations committee, recently devoted his regular column in the Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabi' to a sharp attack on the U.S. for the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Al-Fiqi accused the U.S. of betraying its Arab allies and surrendering to the unbending Iranian policy despite its status as the world’s strongest superpower. He claimed that the lesson that the Arabs should draw from this agreement is that the West, headed by the U.S., understands only the language of force.

"Iran has managed to score an interim achievement for its nuclear policy, and we must learn the lesson [from this], which is that the West understands only the language of force, and it signs an armistice with a brazen country more readily than it accepts the policy of a country that has been its ally for years.

"It is the West that has sold out the region to extremist religious movements; it is the West that wants the Arab and Muslim world to wallow in internal conflict that will keep [the Arabs and Muslims] away from it; it is the West that, in the final result, negotiated with Iran and signed a historic agreement with it despite [this country's] diplomatic measures that are provocative to the U.S., be it [Iran's policy] in Syria or the Gulf, or Hizbullah’s [behavior].

"Indeed, Washington respects only the language of force and the [opposing country's] sense that it is on a par with [the U.S.]. The U.S. understands that the word 'no' [that it heard from Iran] was meant as a warning… The Iranian nuclear agreement revealed the effectiveness of [Iran's] 'brinkmanship' diplomacy. That is why Washington and its allies ignored Israel’s objections and preferred to go their own way: because they understood that sometimes there is an 'important' [interest] and a 'still more important' [interest].