BICOM

The Daily Telegraph today published a Wikileaks cable indicating that Egyptian Vice President and former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has long been the man that Israel hoped would succeed President Hosni Mubarak at the appropriate time. The newspaper cited a leaked Wikileaks cable from 2008, which quoted a senior Israeli defence official, David Hacham, as expressing this preference. The official said that he sometimes spoke with Suleiman several times a day. The cable includes an assessment from a US official confirming that Israel was ‘most comfortable’ with Suleiman as Mubarak’s successor. The Wikileaks cables also revealed Suleiman’s past concerns regarding the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his determination to act to combat Iranian subversion in the region. According to one cable, Suleiman asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood ‘has spawned “11 different Islamist extremist organisations,” most notably the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Gama’a Islamiya (Islamic Group).‘