Ramzy Ezzeldin: The rebirth of the Political Advisor
While veteran diplomat Ramzy Ezzeldin was in Jakarta for a conference on “multilateralism and fragmented regionalism in a fractured world,” navigating the very abstractions that have defined his career, the presses of the Official Gazette back in Cairo was rolling with a decree that would ground him in a far more concrete reality. The President appointed him Political Advisor; reviving a post that had remained a vacuum in the Egyptian state for more than twelve years.
In Cairo’s tightly managed political system, even a minor shift in hierarchy demands a post-mortem. This appointment arrives against the backdrop of El-Sisi’s growing personal engagement with foreign policy; a shift that diplomatic sources describe as becoming “increasingly direct and hands-on.”
According to one diplomatic source who spoke with Al Manassa on condition of anonymity, the rhythm of the state has changed; communications between the president and Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty have intensified, “moving beyond daily contact to extended discussions lasting around an hour,” during which regional and international files are dissected in surgical detail.
Ezzeldin is a name that carries the weight of a specific, storied generation. He entered the Foreign Ministry in the late 1970s alongside a cohort that would eventually occupy the center of gravity in Egyptian statecraft; among them future foreign ministers Nabil Fahmy, Sameh Shoukry, and Mohamed El-Orabi.
Five diplomatic sources identified two traits that distinguish Ezzeldin: rigorous professionalism and rare intellectual confidence. He is, as three current and two former diplomats agreed, a “competent true professional,” characterized by some as “non-ideological” and “enlightened.”
The friction of conviction
However, the phrase that recurs most frequently among those who know him is more pointed: he is “a man of opinion who stands by it.” In the cautious, subterranean culture of a high-stakes bureaucracy, such a reputation is a double-edged sword. “He doesn’t change his position easily once he’s convinced of it,” a former senior diplomat told Al Manassa.
While this stubbornness might be the exact requirement for a moment of strategic rethinking, inside the machinery of government, it tends to create friction.
This friction surfaced in a story that still circulates among his peers. A current diplomat recalled a dispute between Ezzeldin and Ahmed Maher, then Egypt’s ambassador in Washington, while both served at the embassy during Amr Moussa’s time as foreign minister. To some, it was a “professional disagreement” devoid of ideological weight; to others, it was a testament to Ezzeldin’s spine.
Crucially, it was Moussa who provided the decisive backing, shielding Ezzeldin’s career and appointing him Ambassador to Brazil at 43; a remarkably young age by the standards of the diplomatic corps. That relationship endured, as did his friendship with Nabil Fahmy; the two have been schoolmates since the age of fifteen and remain close confidants today.
Ezzeldin now holds the same post once occupied by Osama El-Baz, Mubarak’s political advisor
Ezzeldin was born into the profession. His father was a diplomat. His personal life, too, tracked the geography of the service; he married first the daughter of Ali Timour, Egypt’s former ambassador to Uganda and a long-serving director of protocol at the UN, and later a Syrian woman.
His resume reads like a tour of the world’s pressure points: Moscow, Washington, Brazil, Austria, and Germany. He represented Egypt at the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, eventually rising to First Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry—the same rank once held by Osama El-Baz, the strategic mastermind who served as political advisor to Hosni Mubarak.
The Syrian crucible
The defining assignment of Ezzeldin’s career came between 2014 and 2019. Serving as Deputy Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Syria under Staffan de Mistura, he operated at the epicenter of a brutal, shredding war with Bashar Al-Assad still in power. It was a job that meant moving between near-failed states where the lines between regional and global powers—Iran, Turkey, the Gulf, Russia, the US—had completely blurred.
To understand Ezzeldin’s utility now, one must look to the intellectual trail he has left across a decade of columns in Al-Shorouk, Al-Asharq Al-Awsat, and Al-Majalla. A former UN colleague describes him as “liberal, but not beholden to the United States.” He maintains functional relations with the Russians and views every file through the lens of “direct national interest.”
Ezzeldin envisions rebuilding a more cohesive Arab order, one in which Egypt is the fulcrum and Saudi Arabia an equal pillar of Gulf security
His diagnosis of the current era, articulated in a Feb. 2026 piece for Al-Majalla titled “An Arab Vision for Regional Security: From Dependency to Strategic Agency,” is that the old order is not merely failing; it is dead. Writing as part of a longer series, Ezzeldin argued that “reliance on external guarantees is no longer sufficient.” The slow retreat of US centrality, he contended, and the limits of the Gulf security model exposed an Arab world weakened by decades of fragmentation, leaving a vacuum for Iran and Israel to fill.
The conclusion of this “Arab Vision” is a blueprint for an architecture built from the ground up. In Ezzeldin’s world, Egypt must serve as the balancing fulcrum, a “structural knot”, with Saudi Arabia as the anchor of Gulf security. A regionalism of necessity: Turkey is viewed as a strategic partner, while Iran is treated as a regional power to be “managed through dialogue.” Palestine, meanwhile, remains the non-negotiable key to regional legitimacy.
What makes this intellectual history notable is not merely its consistency, but its predictive power. Ezzeldin has been making this argument since 2013, updating it as the ground shifted beneath his feet. Today, his vision maps, in broad strokes, onto the actual trajectory of Egyptian foreign policy: a widening circle of regional coordination with Riyadh, Ankara, and Islamabad, necessitated by the fallout of the American–Israeli war on Iran.
The Turkey dimension of this vision is worth a pause, for it represents perhaps the most striking alignment between his long-standing dissent and the state’s eventual, arduous pivot. Even in June 2013, as the Cairo-Ankara axis was careening toward a total vitriolic collapse, Ezzeldin published a piece in Al-Shorouk that was almost jarring in its composure.
He urged Egyptian decision-makers not to be seduced by the immediate ideological noise or the heat of the moment, arguing that the challenge was not Turkey itself, but rather Egypt’s own existential task: the creation of an integrated Arab order that could leverage Turkey as a meaningful strategic partner.
His timing, however, proved to be a masterclass in tragic irony. Mohamed Morsi was deposed the following month, and the two capitals plunged into a decade of open, venomous confrontation. Cairo eventually expelled the Turkish ambassador in response to Erdogan’s relentless demands for Morsi’s release.
Yet, history has a way of vindicating the patient strategist. When Cairo and Ankara finally announced the return of ambassadors in 2023, the state was essentially arriving at the destination Ezzeldin had mapped out thirteen years prior.
In El-Baz’ Shadow
The immediate challenge for the new advisor is what the second diplomatic source calls “the regional arrangements in the post-war-on-Iran phase”, a period expected to redraw the map of power and test Egypt’s ability to navigate a multipolar world. Ezzeldin may be asked to find the daylight between Cairo and its regional partners, particularly as quiet tensions simmer beneath the public warmth of Egypt’s partnership with the UAE.
Since coming to power, El-Sisi has surrounded himself with numerous advisors, none of them political
But Ezzeldin’s philosophy contains a demanding, almost subversive caveat for a man in his position. In May 2013, in a piece titled “Egyptian Foreign Policy: Where It Was and Where It Needs to Be,” he wrote for Al-Shorouk that foreign policy is a mirror of domestic strength. For Egypt to be active abroad, it must first be "strong" at home.
In a follow-up that December, he defined this strength with uncomfortable precision: it requires a state governed by the rule of law, a balance between security and civil freedoms, and inclusive, structurally reformed economic growth. External support, he warned, is temporary; without self-reliance, it is a hollow foundation.
This raises the most honest question of his appointment. Ezzeldin is entering a system that defines stability on very different terms than civil freedoms, democratic norms and deep economic reform he once championed. Whether there is room for his brand of “intellectual confidence” within the current state remains to be seen.
The Comeback
The Official Gazette is precise: Ezzeldin is appointed advisor “for political affairs” for one year, starting April 6. His expertise is undeniably external, leaving the “political” half of his title—the domestic half—shrouded in ambiguity.
The first former diplomat Al Manassa spoke with believes Ezzeldin could be the first person from outside the security establishment to be trusted with critical files since Osama El-Baz.
That said, the appointment itself revives something real. Under Mubarak, El-Baz in his capacity as Director of the Presidential Office for Political Affairs, was as close to power as any advisor gets. He served for years as Mubarak’s personal envoy. Others played advisory roles in that era too, but none with the same pull.
Mohamed Morsi tried something different. During his short term he assembled a team of four assistants and 17 advisors in an attempt to project political breadth. One of them, Pakinam El-Sharkawy, served as assistant for political affairs. When interim president Adly Mansour took over in July 2013, he appointed his own team, which included Mostafa Hegazy as political advisor.
Then the role faded. El-Sisi built his advisory structure around national security, counterterrorism, economics, health, national projects, governance, strategic planning, and media. A long list that seemed to double as a mechanism for honoring loyalists. Numbers were trimmed in September 2024. Yet, there was never a political advisor.
The idea surfaced once in the El-Sisi’s early years. Names of prominent journalists Abdallah El-Sennawi and Yasser Rizk were floated, reportedly at the suggestion of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal. Since then, foreign affairs have flowed through the foreign ministers and, on the sensitive files, through the General Intelligence Service.
Which is part of why this appointment raises more questions than answers. Understanding who Ramzy Ezzeldin is does not fully explain why, and why now. Sources agree there is a “ need,” even a “ necessity,” to restore the post.
Two sources, a former diplomat and a current diplomat, believe the recommendation may have come from Fayza Aboul-Naga, the president’s national security advisor. Another current diplomatic source who knew Ezzeldin during his years at the UN, however, believes it came from Nabil Fahmy. Al Manassa was unable to verify either account.