Over the past week, Egypt has struck out against Hezbollah’s activities within the country.

Hezbollah is essentially an arm of Iran. Its infiltration of Egypt has become so deep that Cairo has felt impelled to act for the sake of national security.

Egypt arrested 49 Hezbollah agents last week for planning “hostile operations” and for espionage, Egypt’s Attorney General Abdel-Magid Mohammed said.

Mohammed also said that Hezbollah had rented apartments overlooking the Suez Canal to spy on canal traffic, and that Hezbollah agents held training workshops on how to spread Shiite ideology in Egypt.

Yesterday, Egyptian officials reported that Hezbollah was planning to attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai. They claim to have found bomb-making materials and explosive belts, and to have uncovered a plan to smuggle more weapons into Egypt.

Egyptian cabinet minister Mufed Shehab said that Hezbollah agents were “observing and locating the tourist groups who repeatedly come to south Sinai resorts and residences, paving the way to target them in hostile activities.”

Egyptian authorities are hunting for 13 other suspected Hezbollah members in the Sinai.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah rejected the accusations, but did admit that Hezbollah had some operatives in the area to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

Egypt attacked Nasrallah in the state-controlled media on Sunday, with one newspaper calling him a “monkey sheikh.”

Hezbollah has penetrated deeply into Egypt, according to Lt. Col. Moshe Marzouk of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel’s Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. “Other cells operate in Egypt. The one that was uncovered is neither the first nor the last, and so there is still the danger of an attack against the Israeli Embassy in Cairo,” he said.

Relations between Hezbollah and Egypt have been especially strained since January, when Hezbollah accused Egypt of siding with Israel in the Gaza war.

Now Egypt has had to act against Hezbollah as an issue of national security. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told Lebanon’s prime minister in a phone call on Sunday that “Egypt will not allow anyone to violate its borders or destabilize the country.”

But Iran is Egypt’s real enemy in this spat, and the government knows it. Egyptian daily Al-Ahram quoted a senior official in Cairo saying that Iran was plotting to use Hezbollah to attack various targets across Egypt.

Lieutenant Colonel Marzouk described Iran’s activities in Egypt thus:

Egypt’s territory has become no-man’s-land for the smuggling of money, weapons and terror cells. In fact, because of the difficulties in transporting arms, Hezbollah and the Iranians have built rocket production workshops in Sinai.However, until now the Egyptians preferred not to act against the cells, assuming they do not pose a threat to the Egyptian regime but rather meant for Gaza.Now it has become clear that the terror infrastructure was planning to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in the heart of Egypt, while ignoring the sovereignty of the local government, and by this it crossed a red line.It in effect proved false Nasrallah’s claim that the cell was only there in order to help the Palestinians and support Hamas.

Marzouk reported that Iran’s hold on the country was so strong that Egypt probably would not be able to shake it off:

The terror network is just part of the second stage of the Islamic revolution, whose goal is not only to take over Iran like in Khomeini’s days, but also to export the revolution to the Muslim countries of the region.Iran has started pouring money into the Arab countries years ago, in a bid to establish ideological-religious infrastructure that would help topple the Sunni regimes.

Two of the agents arrested worked for an Iranian tv channel broadcasting out of Cairo. The channel’s offices were used by Hezbollah for secret meetings.

Iran has also heavily infiltrated Egypt’s neighbor Sudan—out of which the Nile flows. Journalist Smadar Peri writes on Ynetnews:

In one moment, Iranian intelligence agents can block the Nile’s water sources, Egypt’s lifeblood, send in al-Qaeda-style murderers, and smuggle weapons and explosives not only to Gaza’s tunnels but also to Cairo and to the Alexandria Port.

This whole episode shows that Iran’s influence is strong in Egypt. Over the past few years Egypt has been moving slightly closer to Iran. Iran wants Egypt onside—either by cajoling it into forming an alliance or by changing the regime to one more supportive of its cause.

By infiltrating Egypt with groups like Hezbollah, Tehran could cause Cairo to align more with Iran to avoid trouble—or it could use the group to help put an Islamist in power.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is aging. If he died or was removed from the scene violently, it would be easy for the popular Muslim Brotherhood to take over. Hamas is an outgrowth of the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood would align Egypt with radical Iran. Hezbollah is just one of several groups that Iran is using to infiltrate Egypt.

Bible prophecy indicates that, one way or the other, Egypt will soon abandon its relatively pro-Western stance and align with Iran. For more information, see our article “Egypt-Iran Alliance Prophesied.”