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Mubarak, Egypt's air force commander in the 1973 war, seemed almost matter-of-fact as he set out to assure the world that the Egyptian government would honor existing treaties and uphold Sadat's policies. Acutely aware that under the terms of the Camp David accords Israel is scheduled to withdraw from the easternmost portion of the Sinai next April, Mubarak assured Jerusalem that he would carry on with the peace negotiations along the lines laid down by Sadat. Despite Egypt's official rift with Saudi Arabia over the peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak declared that he, like Sadat, supports the sale of U.S. AWACS planes to the Saudis. Unlike Sadat, Mubarak refrained from making inflammatory remarks about Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who had long called for Sadat's overthrow and death and whose radio stations last week beamed out fervent propaganda urging Egyptians to rise up against their government. In earlier years, Mubarak had been dismissed by some diplomats as a colorless acolyte. But last week, as he proceeded in a deliberate way to demonstrate the continuity of leadership, he looked more impressive than his reputation had suggested.
Nonetheless, Sadat's violent death raised a host of concerns about Egypt and its relationships with the rest of the world. Sadat was like the Shah of Iran in one respect: he was the show. Both the Americans and the Israelis were aware of the vulnerability of basing their policies on so thin a leadership, even as they concluded that they had no real alternative. Sadat's assassination presents at the very least a serious challenge to U.S. foreign policy and all that that policy must contend with in the Middle East: the Camp David peace process, the Palestinian autonomy talks, the return of the Sinai, the U.S.-encouraged "strategic consensus" of anti-Communist states in the region. How much of Egypt's peace with Israel will survive Sadat's death? Will the new Egyptian leadership move closer to other Arab states, perhaps Saudi Arabia and Jordan at first? Will Israel keep its pledge to evacuate the rest of the Sinai next April? Will Mubarak, like Sadat, go along with Reagan's plan for a strategic consensus, even to the point of giving it precedence over progress toward a Palestinian settlement? Most Western governments are betting strongly on at least one answer: Mubarak is likely to do nothing that could prevent Egypt's recovery of the Sinai. As a senior British diplomat put it last week, "The slogan of the Mubarak leadership will be: Let's get to the end of April with the peace treaty intact. After that we can come to grips with the other problems."
Any inquiry into Egyptian and Middle East prospects begins with the three most gnawing questions of the moment: Who assassinated Anwar Sadat? Why?