After a terrorist organization with links to the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981, a startled world watched with wonder. How will this sudden, unexpected jolt impact world events? Will Sadat’s relatively unknown successor continue the pursuit of peace in the Middle East?

What few people realized at the time was that Hosni Mubarak had been carefully groomed to follow in the steps of his predecessor.

Anwar Sadat recruited Mubarak to be his vice president in April 1975, two years after the general had won praise for drawing up a successful air campaign that was used against Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

“I need a vice president who will share with me state responsibilities at all levels,” Sadat told Mubarak. Then, as if sensing his newfound devotion to peace might endanger his life, Sadat intoned, “No one can foresee the future, and state secrets must not be known by one person alone” (emphasis mine throughout).

For the next six years, President Sadat gradually handed Mubarak the day-to-day responsibilities of running Egypt’s government. This allowed Sadat to focus more of his attention on foreign policy—in particular, the Middle East peace process.

That’s not to say Mubarak was left out of the loop when it came to foreign affairs. Whenever possible, during the countless discussions Sadat had with foreign dignitaries, Mubarak could be seen sitting nearby, quietly taking notes. When circumstances prevented him from attending high-level diplomatic meetings, he would be thoroughly briefed by the president himself.

“There was nothing he did or said that I did not know,” Mubarak related about Sadat. “I have learned a great deal from him.”

And when President Sadat paid with his life for his courageous stand against religious extremism and his commitment to making peace with Israel, Mubarak vowed to stay the course, however unpopular that might be in the Arab world. In response to the assassination, for example, Mubarak cracked down hard on the religious extremism. He arrested more than 350 radical Islamists for their involvement in the assassination plot.

At Sadat’s funeral, Mubarak boldly stated, “I declare that we will honorall international charters, treaties and commitments which Egypt has concluded. Our hands will not cease to push the wheel of peace in pursuance of the mission of a departed leader.”

During an exchange with a reporter from Israel, Mubarak advised him to go and tell the people of Israel, “Don’t worry.”

Two years earlier, Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially recognize the State of Israel. It was Sadat who made the historic peace pact with Israel. But it was Mubarak who honored that agreement and maintained the peace for three decades.

Is it any wonder why so many Israelis hold Hosni Mubarak in such high regard? Mubarak is the primary reason Israel has cut military spending and reduced its troop presence along the Egyptian border—even as Egypt’s militarily establishment has grown to be one of the strongest in the Arab world.

None of this is intended to whitewash Mubarak’s flaws. He does rule with an iron fist. His administration is corrupt. But he is not Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He hasn’t declared jihad against Israel or the United States. To the contrary—this strong man of Egypt has honored Sadat’s promise and maintained a cold peace with the State of Israel for the past 30 years!

During that same time, Egypt has been America’s most important and strategically significant ally throughout the Arab world.

Yet, the moment Mubarak’s regime started to crumble, the Obama administration wasted little time in hanging him out to dry. In fact, for several years now the United States has been actively working to undermine Mubarak’s authoritarian regime.

In early 2005, President George W. Bush said the United States would no longer “tolerate oppression for the sake of stability.” Later that year, in Cairo, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained how Bush’s freedom agenda applied to Egypt. “The Egyptian government must fulfill the promise it has made to its people—and to the entire world—by giving its citizens the freedom to choose,” Rice demanded.

So, under heavy pressure from the United States, Mubarak loosened restraints on parliamentary elections. That ended up clearing the way for the Muslim Brotherhood to capture nearly 20 percent of the seats.

The following year, Bush’s freedom agenda was dealt another massive blow when free elections enabled Hamas to seize control of Gaza.

After that, the Bush administration wised up a bit. It stopped complaining about Mubarak’s authoritarianism and Egypt’s human rights violations and Mubarak, in turn, clamped down hard on the Muslim Brotherhood.

President Obama’s anti-colonial agenda has since breathed invigorating life into the Brotherhood. More than that, even, it has actively worked to empower and embolden the movement. In early 2009, for example, when President Mubarak was warning U.S. diplomats about the Iranian “cancer” that was spreading throughout the Middle East, President Obama was hosting meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood at the White House.

In June of 2009, when President Obama delivered his message to the Islamic world in front of a Cairo audience packed with members of the Brotherhood, he said Iran had every right to develop nuclear power.

Tellingly, Mubarak didn’t even attend the Cairo address.

A few days after the Cairo speech, tens of thousands of angry Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran demanding democratic freedoms after the mullahs had rigged the election in favor of Ahmadinejad. President Obama withstood heated criticism for not supporting a popular protest that was brutally crushed by an Islamic theocracy. He excused American neutrality by saying, “It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.”

But with the pro-American government in Egypt, America started meddling at the first sign of trouble for Mubarak. Last Friday, President Obama made it clear he sided with the anti-Mubarak protesters on the street. “I’ve always said to [Mubarak] that making sure that they are moving forward on reform—political reform, economic reform—is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt, and you can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets,” the president said.

On Saturday, Obama met with his advisers and concluded that “an orderly transition” of government was needed in Cairo. The next day, the White House dispatched Frank Wisner, an experienced diplomat, to Cairo in order to apply pressure on Mubarak to step down.

On Monday, President Obama met with a team of foreign-policy experts at the White House to discuss Cairo’s transition of power. Significantly, wrote the New York Times, those participating in the meeting “made clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of an orderly process,” in the words of one attendee.

That same day, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that Egypt’s new government “has to include a whole host of important nonsecular actors that give Egypt a strong chance to continue to be [a] stable and reliable partner.” It was the first time the Obama administration had publicly declared its support for the Muslim Brotherhood to play a role in a reformed Egyptian government.

On Tuesday, Wisner met with President Mubarak in Cairo and politely informed him that Washington wanted him to step down. Later that same day, Mubarak announced that he would not seek reelection in September.

But President Obama wasn’t satisfied with a seven-month transition. In a short speech from the White House lawn on Tuesday evening, he insisted on a transition that “must begin now.”

“You don’t understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now,” Mubarak responded in an interview with abc yesterday. He said if he stepped down immediately, he feared it would result in a chaotic scene that would enable the Muslim Brotherhood to grab hold of power.

Mubarak then defended his legacy by pointing to his loyal service as president of Egypt. And no matter what one thinks about the way he ruled, it is hard to dismiss the positive fruits of his reign. In the three decades Mubarak has ruled over the Arab world’s most populous state—a nation in which most Egyptians have an unfavorable view of America and would welcome an Islamic influence over the government—Mubarak has managed to suppress religious extremism domestically while advancing the interests of the United States abroad. During that same time, he has maintained peace with Israel, just as he vowed to do after Sadat was murdered.

And for all this, the United States says thank you by casually tossing him aside in favor of a populist uprising that is currently being hijacked by radical Islam.

This is a play-by-play repeat of what happened during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. As we have been saying for nearly 20 years, this is leading to an Islamist Egypt.

In fact, Herbert W. Armstrong knew where this was headed long before the Trumpet came along. He actually met with Mubarak on Nov. 21, 1981, just six weeks after Sadat’s assassination. During their 20-minute meeting, Mubarak reiterated his promise to finish what Sadat had started. “We want peace,” he said to Mr. Armstrong—“at least to live in a very peaceful atmosphere with all of our neighbors around us. And we are going to do our best in this direction. I’m going to do the maximum.”

Mr. Armstrong then praised Mubarak for his sincere attempt to continue where Sadat left off. “You’re setting a wonderful example,” Mr. Armstrong said. But he then explained how utterly incapable man is at making peace. Only by the intervention of God Himself, Mr. Armstrong continued, would there ever be lasting peace.

The Egyptian president actually agreed with Mr. Armstrong! Mubarak said, “I think peace will prevail sooner or later, whether we like it or we don’t like it.”

Yes indeed! Even in this age of man, we are often reminded of how human nature is generally hostile to what it takes to achieve any kind of peace. Anwar Sadat, for example, paid with his own blood for a peace agreement Mr. Armstrong knew would be short-lived.

This is why, one week after he met with Egypt’s new president in 1981, Mr. Armstrong wrote this in a letter to Plain Truth subscribers: “The new President Mubarak assured me he intends to continue President Sadat’s efforts for Middle East peace, and he may be sealing his own fate in so doing.”