For three decades, Egypt has been an ally of both Israel and America, and a bulwark for security and peace in the Middle East.

For two decades, the Trumpet has said this status quo would change—that Egypt would undergo a dramatic shift toward radical Islam.

Now that shift is happening before our eyes—and quickly.

Hosni Mubarak was only ousted in February, and Egypt hasn’t even held elections yet. Right now it’s being run by a military council, overseeing a caretaker civilian cabinet.

Still, the nation’s foreign policy and political orientation is already visibly changing in a way that threatens to transform the entire region.

Clearly, Palestinians and Islamist terrorists alike now have a powerful ally in their fight against Israel and the West.

Many observers note that when elections are held in September, the radical Muslim Brotherhood—which just launched its own “Freedom and Justice” Party—is expected to gain significant control and will likely drive Egypt even further toward radicalism.

But it is becoming clear that the Brotherhood is hardly the only force pushing the country in that direction.

Just look at the foreign-policy moves coming out of Cairo since February.

One of the first was to begin thawing Egypt’s notoriously frosty relations with Hamas, the terrorist Palestinian group holed up in the Gaza Strip on its northern border. “For the first time in the history of the relationship, Palestinian and Egyptian ministers are communicating,” said Hamas’s political adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. “This is a substantial development that did not take place in Mubarak’s era.”

Right after taking control, the interim Egyptian government allowed a senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, to travel from Gaza to visit Sudan, Syria and Turkey—something Mubarak never would have allowed.

In March, Zahar met with secular opposition leaders in Egypt to talk about the Palestinian cause. One prominent leader declared that his political party was against maintaining the Camp David treaty with Israel—the most important guarantor of peace in the region for a generation. Joseph de Courcy wrote that this meeting “was also attended by representatives of the 25th January Revolution movement who ‘affirmed that Egypt’s youth support the people of Gaza and the whole of Palestine with their entire hearts and souls, until liberation’” (Courcy’s Intelligence Brief, May 4).

Note that! It wasn’t the Muslim Brotherhood making this initial move against Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. It wasn’t Egypt’s overt Islamists. It was the secularists and the youth movement. They appear equally prepared to reach out to Hamas—at Israel’s expense.

On April 28, Egypt’s foreign minister announced that the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza would be opened permanently. Mubarak had sealed this border to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza and to clamp down on terrorism. The new government is apparently far more concerned with pleasing the anti-Israel sentiment of the Arab street.

Last week came the huge news of a reconciliation pact between the divided Palestinian leaders of Hamas and the secular Fatah. This deal, built on a common Palestinian desire to defeat Israel and establish a Palestinian state, is bad news for Israel.

Remarkably, this pact was engineered by Egypt. Nothing more starkly illustrates the country’s radical new orientation.

Arab movements are ecstatic. “Egypt has returned forcefully to playing its leading role in the Arab region in support of the central Arab cause [Palestine],” wrote London-based pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi. “The inter-Palestinian reconciliation agreement will stand its ground. This is not only because it embodies the Palestinian people’s aspirations; it is also because it relies on the solid ground provided by revolutionary Egypt, the new Egypt, the Egypt of dignity and honor, the Egypt of the youth of Tahrir Square for which we have waited for over 40 years. It is now returning to us, young and fit, rising like a giant from amidst the ruins of corruption and slavery to Israel and the U.S.” (April 28; emphasis mine throughout).

Egypt has quickly moved from guaranteeing Israel’s security to inspiring the Arab cause against Israel.

On top of these foreign-policy maneuvers—and making this Egyptian revolution so much more dangerous to Israel—is the interim government’s efforts to restore diplomatic ties with Iran. Though relations have been severed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Egypt just announced it wants to “open a new page” with Tehran.

After decades of Egypt and Saudi Arabia providing a counterweight to Iran’s expanding influence, an Egypt-Iran axis would significantly alter the Middle East. Egypt’s interim premier has been touring the region trying to convince the Persian Gulf states that, in Stratfor’s words, “revived Egyptian-Iranian ties would not undermine their security.” Their skepticism is certainly understandable.

“All of this confirms our view … that Israel faces a strategic squeeze,” De Courcy writes. “Broadly speaking, the danger is that Egypt is turning hostile (or, at the very least, unfriendly) while the Iranian regime looks certain to survive the Arab Spring unscathed but with increased influence in the Gulf, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon” (op. cit.).

The fact that these changes are all occurring under a provisional secular administration—before the Muslim Brotherhood has even had the opportunity to establish itself politically—is remarkable. It suggests that the Brotherhood’s political success isn’t even a prerequisite to Egypt’s transformation. Nevertheless, that radical change is sure to accelerate with time.

This trend should leave no doubt as to the legitimacy of the Trumpet’s biblically based prediction of Egypt’s turn toward radicalism and reconciliation with Iran!

As Trumpet columnist Brad Macdonald wrote two years ago, “The Gaza war has weakened President Mubarak’s tenuous grip on his nation, and exposed more fully the extent of support that Iranian-led radicalism has among the Egyptian populace. We are about to witness the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, the emergence of a radical Islamic regime in Egypt, and the beginning of the terrifying Egypt-Iran alliance that God said would precede the eruption of war across the Middle East!”