Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and is strategically located at the geographic nexus between Africa and the Middle East (see fig. 1). It is bordered to the north by the Mediterranean Sea; to the west by Libya; to the south by Sudan; and to the east by the Gaza Strip, Israel, and the Red Sea. Egypt controls the Suez Canal, a strategic maritime linkage between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea. The United States helped broker the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979 and since then has regarded Egypt as a key strategic partner on a range of security issues, including maintaining peace in the Middle East and countering terrorism and violent extremism. For example, Egypt played a key role in mediating negotiations between Israel and Hamas during their 2014 conflict. Egypt has also undertaken a number of security operations in recent years to restore law and order in the Sinai Peninsula and to combat terrorist organizations that have used the peninsula as a base of operations to conduct attacks in Egypt and Israel. In addition, Egypt joined the U.S. coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in September 2014. Egypt has faced a number of economic challenges in recent years, including persistently high unemployment, growing public debt, unsustainable subsidies on food and fuel, and declining revenues in key sectors, such as tourism. According to a 2014 International Monetary Fund report, political and social tensions continue to depress economic For example, real gross domestic product and private activity in Egypt.investment growth remained weak; inflation remained high (consumer price inflation was estimated to be 10.7 percent from 2013 to 2014); and the poverty rate increased to 26.3 percent. Furthermore, while improvements in Egypt’s political environment have boosted the World Bank’s assessments of the country’s economic outlook, in 2014 the World Bank noted that some measures of Egypt’s economic performance, such as foreign direct investment and international reserves, remain well below their pre-revolutionary levels. The World Bank also noted that Egypt suffered from weak performance in indicators of government transparency and accountability, earned a low ranking (114 out of 177 countries) in an index of global corruption, and ranked close to the bottom in the World Bank’s 2013 Ease of Doing Business index. In the years leading up to the January 2011 revolution, the Egyptian government initiated work on a number of economic reform initiatives, including tariff reductions, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the easing of regulations on the private sector, according to U.S. government documents; however, reform initiatives have stalled since that time. More recently, since taking office in June 2014, President al-Sisi has started work on several economic initiatives, including cutting fuel subsidies and launching major infrastructure projects such as an expansion of the Suez Canal. Since the January 2011 revolution, other countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, have provided billions of dollars in economic assistance to Egypt. After a long period of relative political stability, Egypt has experienced a series of tumultuous political transitions in recent years. Following the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in October 1981, Hosni Mubarak assumed power in Egypt and ruled for almost 30 years until 2011. Starting on January 25, 2011, Egyptian citizens took to the streets to protest against President Mubarak and to demand a variety of political, economic, and social reforms. These protests followed shortly after and were inspired in part by the successful revolution in Tunisia that began in December 2010. The protests in Egypt culminated in President Mubarak’s resignation on February 11, 2011. Since that time, Egypt has continued to undergo a series of turbulent political transitions. After a transitional period of military rule following President Mubarak’s resignation, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in June 2012. However, in July 2013, the Egyptian military removed Morsi from power after widespread citizen protests against his rule. After Morsi’s removal, the military appointed the chief justice of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, to serve as interim president. Former field marshal Abdelfattah al-Sisi resigned from the Egyptian army and was subsequently elected as president in May 2014. In January 2015, the Egyptian government announced that parliamentary elections would take place in two phases, with the first slated for March 22 and 23 and the second for April 26 and 27, 2015. At various points since the January 2011 revolution, Egyptian government officials have reiterated their commitment to Egypt’s democratic transition, but the Egyptian government has also taken a number of actions that have caused some observers to question its commitment to democratic ideals. For example, the Egyptian government has conducted an aggressive campaign against supporters of former President Morsi, including one incident on August 14, 2013, when Egyptian security forces killed at least 817 Morsi supporters in Raba’a Square, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Additionally, in June 2013, an Egyptian court convicted employees of four U.S. nongovernmental organizations on charges related to their implementation of U.S. government-funded democracy and governance assistance programs. The Egyptian government has also taken other steps to curb press freedom and limit political dissent, according to U.S. government, international organization, and nongovernmental organization reporting. For example, in June 2014, an Egyptian court sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to multiyear sentences on charges of producing misleading news coverage and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Figure 2 provides a timeline of key events in Egypt’s political transitions. Since 1979, when the Egypt-Israel peace treaty was signed, Egypt has been among the top recipients of U.S. foreign assistance. Historically, the U.S. government has provided Egypt with both security and economic assistance. The United States has provided Egypt with almost $64 billion in assistance since 1979, including about $40 billion in security assistance and $24 billion in economic assistance. While U.S. funding for security assistance to Egypt has stayed generally constant since the 1980s, economic assistance has declined significantly since that time. The U.S. government provides bilateral assistance to Egypt through a number of accounts, which are described in table 1. In addition to its bilateral assistance, the U.S. government has also provided assistance to Egypt through a number of accounts that fund global or regional programs, including the Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund, the Democracy Fund, and the Global Health Program. The U.S. government provides the majority of its security assistance to Egypt through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) account. Egypt has used FMF funding to purchase and sustain a wide array of military systems, including major systems such as F-16 aircraft, Apache helicopters, and M1A1 tanks, as shown in figure 3. The U.S. government provides the majority of its economic assistance for Egypt through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) account. The U.S. government has used ESF assistance to fund economic development, health, education, and democracy and governance programs in Egypt. Appendix II provides examples of activities that the U.S. government has funded with ESF in each of these areas. The U.S. government funds most ESF programming in coordination with the Egyptian government under assistance implementation agreements, according to USAID and State officials. The U.S. government also uses the ESF account to directly fund nongovernmental organizations and other organizations to implement activities in Egypt outside of the framework of an assistance implementation agreement, including democracy and governance activities. The U.S. government has used assistance from other accounts to fund a range of other activities. For example, the U.S. government has used International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding to provide training to Egyptian military personnel on U.S. military doctrine and values, International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) funding to train the Egyptian police on forensic investigative techniques and community policing models, and Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR) funding to expand cooperation with the Egyptian government related to efforts to target and disrupt international terrorism and weapons smuggling groups. U.S. strategic objectives for Egypt have generally remained constant since fiscal year 2009. The U.S. government’s overall levels of security and economic assistance to Egypt have also generally remained constant from fiscal years 2009 through 2014. While U.S. strategic objectives and overall levels of assistance generally did not change during this period, the U.S. government did increase its focus on particular objectives and adjusted some aspects of its assistance in response to Egypt’s political transitions. After the revolution in January 2011, the U.S. government adjusted its assistance to place more emphasis on democracy and governance and economic growth initiatives. After the removal of President Morsi, the U.S. government adjusted its assistance again by suspending some assistance, including holding the delivery of several large military systems, and focusing its economic assistance more on programs that directly benefit the Egyptian people and its security assistance more on shared interests. According to U.S. government officials, this policy remains in place, but some previously suspended assistance to Egypt has resumed, enabled in part by the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014, which provided additional authority for and restrictions on U.S. assistance to Egypt. U.S. strategic objectives for Egypt have generally remained constant since fiscal year 2009, according to senior U.S. officials and State documents. objectives for Egypt: State officials identified the following as U.S. strategic Egypt is stable, democratic, and prosperous. Egypt upholds the peace treaty with Israel and is a partner for regional stability. State confirmed that the U.S. objectives for assistance to Egypt are consistent with U.S. policy developed by the National Security Council.