The Cairo-Tehran Express … Egyptian-Iranian intelligence meeting prompts fears of a new Middle East terror axis … U.S. intelligence agencies recently monitored a secret meeting between Egypt's intelligence chief and a senior Iranian spy that is raising new fears the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo could begin covertly supporting global terrorism. According to U.S. officials, the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, Maj. Gen. Murad Muwafi, met in early August with a senior official of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Disclosure of the Egyptian-Iranian intelligence meeting comes as the Obama administration is planning to provide $1 billion in aid to bail out Egypt's new Islamist government. The administration is said to be seeking closer ties to the new regime in Cairo, following the ouster in February 2011 of long-time ally Hosni Mubarak. – FreeBeacon

Dominant Social Theme: These Islamicists are all the same and all violent.

Free-Market Analysis: The Egyptians are getting together with the Iranians, according to legendary military reporter Bill Gertz.

This makes our collective head spin. First, a word about Bill Gertz. Here's his current bio …

Bill Gertz is senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon he was a national security reporter, editor, and columnist for 27 years at the Washington Times. Bill is the author of six books, four of which were national bestsellers …

Bill has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a "tool of the CIA" after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk after he wrote a column critical of the CIA's analysis of China.

And China's communist government has criticized him for news reports exposing China's weapons and missile sales to rogues states … Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once told him: "You are drilling holes in the Pentagon and sucking out information."

We can see from this bio that Gertz has an extensive reputation as an aggressive reporter, and this article would seem to confirm that perspective. It is surely an informed and hard-hitting story.

We do have some problems with it and we'll get to that in a moment. First, some more from the article:

U.S. intelligence gathering targeting Egypt has been stepped up over the past year as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist party, came to power in June. The group's credo includes the phrase, "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."

Since the revolution that led to the ouster of the pro-U.S. regime of Hosni Mubarak, a large number of radical Islamists have been released from prison and have gone back to preaching anti-Western and anti-Israel jihad, or holy war.

The meeting between Muwafi and the Iranian, identified by officials only with his last name, Gerami, set off security concerns because the Iranian spy service is a key player in Tehran's international support for terrorism, as well as anti-U.S. and anti-Israel operations …

Asked about the Egyptian-Iranian intelligence meeting, a U.S. official told the Free Beacon: "The Egyptians are still skeptical of Iranian motives. There's a lot of baggage to overcome with Tehran, so for now any efforts to expand outreach and build a new relationship are likely to be cautious and fairly limited."

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who specialized in Middle Eastern affairs, said it is difficult to gauge the significance of the Gerami-Muwafi meeting, and noted that liaisons between spy agencies are common.

"Sometimes those meetings are significant," said Gerecht. "Other times, not much at all."

What strikes us here is the hedged tone of the article. On the surface, a pact between Iran and Egypt would be momentous indeed. But after proclaiming the possibility of a pact, Gertz spends a lot of time backpedaling. The article descends into a series of questionable generalizations.

Let us note we are using Gertz and his article to make a larger point. Gertz is a very good reporter but in this article we find questionable elements that we find in most mainstream Western reporting.

The main issue we have is one that we have been on the forefront of reporting and has to do with American and NATO support for the so-called Arab Spring.

In our opinion, Gertz should use this as the foundation for his larger analysis. He doesn't and thus ends up, as many do, with a lot of surface-y conclusions.

The main conclusion, of course, is that there could be an alliance between Egypt and Iran.

But Egyptian Muslims are Sunni and Iranian Muslims are Shia. To have an alliance between these two is as logical as having an alliance between the 20th century USA and the USSR.

The Sunni religion in all of its incarnations is based on the idea of an Islam ruled by ideas and ideology. Shia Islam is royalist. The head or heads of the Shia Church are to have some familial relationship. About.com (Islam) explains it thusly:

Both Sunni and Shia Muslims share the most fundamental Islamic beliefs and articles of faith. The differences between these two main sub-groups within Islam initially stemmed not from spiritual differences, but political ones. Over the centuries, however, these political differences have spawned a number of varying practices and positions which have come to carry a spiritual significance.

This is putting it mildly. Shia and Sunni Muslims do not like each other and often war against each other.

Now, it is true that Gertz claims that Saudi Arabian Salafists are at the forefront of rapprochement with the Iranian Shias. But in doing so he neglects to point out that the US dollar hegemony is behind Saudi Arabia's radical sects.

Radical Wahhabism in particular is being encouraged by the US simply through propping up the Saud family rule.

Why would the US prop up radical Islam? In fact, it is not the US per se but agents of the global power elite that are trying to foment a war between East and West.

This war is being created to advance the cause of world government and to blunt the impact of what we call the Internet Reformation.

As more and more people discover the way the world really works, the dynastic central banking families work hard, apparently, to shove the globe into economic depression, military conflict and regulatory despotism.

This is an evident and obvious paradigm. We were writing nearly two years ago that the power elite was destabilizing the Middle East to create Islamic governments and to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

Just search for Daily Bell and "Islamic crescent" or "phony Arab Spring"

Gertz mentions none of this in his analysis, even though he is among the best of the best of mainstream military analysts.

Nor does he mention what has been fairly conclusively proven in the alternative media, that the power elite and US intel were behind the current "Iranian Revolution."

The elites therefore control both parts of this "alliance" that Gertz is discussing and they control both sides of the larger East-West upcoming conflict.

It is being manufactured, apparently. Not to point this out, or at least to allude to it, does a disservice to one's audience, in our humble view.

Gertz is a terrific reporter, and we have alluded to difficulties we have with the story not to criticize him but to make the point once again that the full truth about the current East-West confrontation is not what it seems to be.

It is being manufactured.