No more cameras at funerals 📷

Hey friends, welcome back to the Egypt Weekly Roundup!

A confession before we start. Last week’s intro was, word for word, the intro from the week before. Not one of you wrote in about it, which we are choosing not to think about too hard. This one is new. We checked twice.

On to a week where Egypt spent most of its time in New York, trying to talk two governments at war into the same room. A CIA director came to Cairo on Sunday, and by Thursday the prime minister was saying the quiet part out loud from the UN podium.

Closer to home, Egyptians abroad have now sent USD 29.7 billion back in seven months, photographing funerals is off limits for Egyptian newsrooms, and at 19, Amina Orfi is the youngest woman ever to reach world number one in squash.

Let’s get into it.

P.S. This is your last chance to grab an item from our ‘Made in Egypt’ tee and tote collection. This is a limited-edition collection produced in partnership with four Egyptian artists. Check it out here.

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IRAN | UNITED STATES | MEDIATION
CAIRO PUTS ITSELF BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND TEHRAN

Egypt spent the week openly positioning itself as the go-between in the war between the United States and Iran, and it did so at three levels in six days: a CIA director in Cairo on Sunday, the prime minister at the UN podium on Thursday, and the foreign minister working three sets of doors in New York on Friday.

It started with a visit: President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi received CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Cairo on Sunday, 20 September. Ratcliffe said Washington appreciated “the pivotal role played by Egypt in support of efforts to reach peaceful and comprehensive resolutions to the region’s crises.” El-Sisi backed “efforts to reach a comprehensive settlement that ends the Iran crisis” while safeguarding “freedom of international maritime shipping,” which is the phrase to watch: it is where Egypt’s diplomacy and Egypt’s balance sheet meet.

Then Madbouly said it on the record: Addressing the 81st UN General Assembly on Thursday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said “Egypt is working with international partners to mediate between the United States and Iran in an effort to halt the military escalation and end the conflict,” warning of “serious repercussions for stability in the Middle East and beyond.” Tehran wants US military pressure eased and the Strait of Hormuz reopened. Washington wants any settlement to deal with the nuclear programme. The two sides held their first mediator-facilitated talks in months on the margins of the assembly.

And Abdelatty worked the corridors: Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty met his Iranian, Omani and Turkish counterparts in New York on Friday. With Iran’s Abbas Araghchi he pressed for a “return to dialogue and the resumption of the diplomatic track through negotiations.” With Oman’s Badr bin Hamad Al-Busaidi the subject was the Red Sea and Hormuz. With Turkey’s Hakan Fidan it was Gaza, Sudan, Libya and Iran. In all three he returned to the same point: freedom and security of international navigation, and keeping global energy and fertiliser supply chains out of the fight.

Why Egypt is in a hurry: A closed Hormuz pushes traffic and risk into the Red Sea, and the Red Sea is where Egypt makes its money. The EBRD counted seaborne oil exports from the region halving from 23 million to 11 million barrels a day after the conflict broke out on 28 February. Higher oil prices land on Egyptian fuel subsidies, and every ship that reroutes is Suez revenue that does not arrive. On Saturday Egypt condemned Houthi missile attacks on Taif and Yanbu, calling Saudi Arabia’s security “an extension of Egypt’s national security”; Saudi forces had intercepted six ballistic missiles on Thursday.

The other files in the bag: Madbouly used the same trip to call Nile water an “existential issue that allows for no compromise,” telling the assembly that “the Nile is not merely an economic resource; it is a lifeline” and pressing again for binding agreements on shared waters rather than what Egypt calls a fait accompli by upstream states. He also rejected “attempts to create a new fait accompli in the occupied West Bank,” and raised Gaza reconstruction and Security Council reform on African representation.

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REMITTANCES | CENTRAL BANK | DIASPORA
EGYPTIANS ABROAD SENT HOME USD 29.7 BILLION IN SEVEN MONTHS

Remittances reached USD 29.7 billion (EGP 1.54 trillion) in the first seven months of 2026, up 28.1 percent on the same period last year, according to a Central Bank statement on Monday. The comparable figure for 2025 was USD 23.2 billion. If you are reading this from Dubai, Toronto or Kuwait City, this story is partly about you.

Month by month: July brought in USD 4.5 billion, a fifth more than the USD 3.8 billion of July 2025. June was USD 4.2 billion, up 15.6 percent year on year. The pace has held rather than spiked, which is the part the Central Bank cares about.

The full-year picture: The 2025/2026 fiscal year, which closed in June, recorded USD 47.3 billion, up 29.6 percent from USD 36.5 billion. Inflows have more than doubled over the past decade.

What changed: The Central Bank credits the reforms that began in March 2024, chiefly the move to a more flexible exchange rate and the squeezing out of the parallel market. When the official and street rates converge, money that was travelling home in suitcases and through brokers goes through banks instead, where it gets counted. Expanded digital transfer services have helped too.

The other side of the ledger: The Central Bank held interest rates steady on Thursday, leaving the overnight deposit rate at 19 percent and lending at 20 percent, with August headline inflation at 14.5 percent against a 7 percent target. The same week, the EBRD cut its 2026 growth forecast for Egypt to 4.6 percent and noted that interest payments now consume 88 percent of government revenues, the highest ratio anywhere the bank operates. The IMF, reviewing the year, found non-resident holdings of local-currency government debt had fallen from USD 39.1 billion in February to USD 22.2 billion by early April, with the pound down roughly 14 to 17 percent. Record remittances are real money arriving. They are also, right now, one of the few lines going the right way.

MEDIA | PRIVACY | REGULATION
NO MORE CAMERAS AT FUNERALS

Egypt’s Ministry of State for Information and the editors-in-chief of licensed digital news outlets agreed on Monday to ban photography at citizens’ funerals and condolence gatherings. The decision was unanimous, and it covers pictures posted to personal social media accounts as well as anything the outlets publish themselves.

How it is meant to work: The editors agreed to hold colleagues accountable for breaches. There is no published penalty, no named enforcement body and no statute cited: this is an undertaking between a ministry and a room full of editors rather than a regulation with teeth, at least as announced.

The reasoning given: Protecting the privacy of grieving families, and cutting off a common route for false information, since a photograph from a funeral travels faster than any correction to the story around it. Minister of State for Information Diaa Rashwan framed it as part of the state’s commitment to addressing social media violations of constitutional rights.

The wider push: Rashwan also urged the outlets to form “a unified representative body” so that digital media can “speak with a single voice.” Monday’s meeting was the seventh in a preparatory series running up to Egypt’s first national media conference in December, called for by El-Sisi.

What to watch: Anyone who has seen a phone held over a coffin will understand the instinct here, and families have been asking for exactly this. The open question is the one the announcement does not answer: who decides what counts as a citizen’s funeral. A private burial is straightforward. A funeral that is itself the news, for a public figure or after a disaster, is not, and nothing published on Monday says which side of the line that falls on. It also lands a week after the Supreme Council for Media Regulation barred Dan Adam from all platforms, making two agreements in two weeks about what Egyptian outlets may not show.