You know, when we pick up a biography, especially
of a major political figure, there's this subconscious
thing we do. We look for the straight line. The
coherence, right. The narrative. Exactly. We
want to see that seed that was planted in childhood,
you know, watered by education, and then it grows
into this... mighty oak tree of leadership. We
want it all to make sense. We love that destiny
story. It's comforting to think that great leaders
were just, well, always meant to be great. It
is. But looking at the source material for today,
the map of this man's life is not a straight
line. It's not even a curve. It's like looking
at a seismograph during a massive earthquake.
It really is. We are looking at a figure who
is arguably the ultimate walking contradiction
of the 20th century Middle East. It's a study
in whiplash. I mean, we're talking about a man
who started as a conspirator in the shadows.
Literally. Literally plotting assassinations,
wearing disguises. And then he ends up as a global
spatesman accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in
a tuxedo. A man accused of collaborating with
the Nazis in the 1940s, who then becomes the
hero of the crossing in the 1970s and is ultimately
assassinated by the very forces he unleashed
to keep himself in power. And somewhere in the
middle of all that. He just completely reshapes
the geopolitical map of the region. He changed
the rules of the game so thoroughly that, in
many ways, everyone is still playing by them
today. Today we are doing a deep dive into the
Wikipedia article for Anwar Sadat, Egypt's third
president. And the mission here is pretty specific.
We want to move past the headline, you know,
the man who signed the peace treaty. Which is
what everyone knows. Right, and really unpack
the mechanics of his survival, his improbable
rise, and his tragic, almost Shakespearean fall.
Because you really can't understand the modern
Middle East. The security architecture, the role
of the military, that persistent tension with
Islamist movements. Without understanding Sadat,
he is the architect of the system that still
exists. So let's go back to the source. It starts
us off in a village, Mit Abu El Qom, in the Manufia
Governorate. And the date is Christmas Day, 1918.
A Christmas baby, born into a peasant family.
And the source really emphasizes the poverty
here, but also... Just the sheer scale of his
family environment. Yeah. He was one of 14 siblings.
14. I mean, just pause on that for a second.
Imagine the dinner table dynamics in a household
like that. You have to fight to be heard. You
have to fight to eat. You learn very quickly
how to negotiate or how to be louder than everyone
else. It certainly creates a drive to distinguish
yourself. You can't just be one of the kids.
But there is a specific detail in his parentage
that the article flags, which becomes incredibly
relevant much, much later in his life. In how
he was perceived? Exactly. In how he was perceived
by the world and, crucially, by his own people.
You're talking about his mother? Yes. His father
was Upper Egyptian, but his mother, Sit al -Burain,
was born to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese
father. So Sadat had this distinct Sudanese heritage.
He was darker skinned. Well, darker skinned than
much the Egyptian elite, the Pasha class at the
time. And in a class conscious and frankly, a
color conscious society like early 20th century
Egypt, that is not a small detail to just gloss
over. It's not. It marked him as an outsider.
It likely fueled that chip on his shoulder, that
intense need to prove he belonged and that he
was capable of leading, which we see driving
him all the way to the presidency. So like so
many young men from modest backgrounds in that
era who wanted to escape the village and make
a name for themselves, he sees one clear path
up the ladder. The military? The military. The
great equalizer. He graduates from the Royal
Military Academy in 1938. He joins the Signal
Corps. And this is where history starts to pivot
because of where he gets posted. I get sent to
Sudan. To Sudan. And there he meets a fellow
officer. a guy named Gamal Abdel Nasser. The
man who would become the sun around which Sadat
would orbit for decades. At that time, though,
they were just young, angry officers. But together,
they formed the Free Officers. Which sounds like
a social club or maybe a debate team, but let's
be crystal clear for you listening, this was
a revolutionary cell. It was a conspiracy, pure
and simple. Their goal was explicit. Kick the
British out of Egypt and purge the corruption
of the monarchy. And you have to remember the
context. At this time, the British are pulling
the strings of King Farouk. Egypt is technically
independent but not really. The British ambassador
is the one calling all the shots. And this anti
-British fire, this nationalism, it drives Sadat.
to do some things that reading the source today
honestly made me do a double take. Oh, yeah.
We have to talk about the World War II years
because this is where that contradiction theme
really just explodes. This is the wait, really?
Moment for most people who only know him as the
peacemaker. The source explicitly states that
Sadat was a member of the Young Egypt Party.
and doesn't mince words describing them. It calls
the party fascist and ultra -nationalist. It's
a jarring association for sure. We usually associate
that era's fascism with Europe, but it had its
tendrils elsewhere. And it goes even further.
It talks about Operation Salam. It says Sadat
collaborated with Nazi Germany. He was actively
meeting with German agents in Cairo during the
war. And context is everything here. And we had
to be careful to understand the why. We can't
view 1940s Cairo through a 2026 lens. Of course
not. For Sadat and his cohort, the British were
the oppressor. They were the occupiers. The Germans,
well, they were the enemy of his oppressor. The
classic enemy of my enemy is my friend logic.
Precisely. Sadat wasn't necessarily buying into
the racial theories of Nazis and more the Holocaust.
He was buying into the idea that if Rommel breaks
through to Cairo, the British are gone. He's
even quoted in the source saying he wanted to
make Egypt a second Iraq. A second Iraq. What
does he mean by that? He was referring to the
Rashid Ali al -Gilani coup in Iraq, which was
a big anti -British pro -Axis uprising. He wanted
to replicate that chaos in Egypt to shake off
the colonial yoke. So he was willing to make
a deal with the devil to get national liberation.
And he paid for it. The British intelligence
services, they weren't sleeving. He was arrested.
He spent a significant chunk of the war in British
prisons. And prison seems to have been his university.
It's where he learns English. He learns German.
He strategizes. But even after the war, he doesn't
stop. The source mentions he was involved in
the assassination of Amin Osman in 1946. Amin
Osman was a very pro -British minister. Sadat
was part of a secret society. Again, conspiracy
is his trade. decided Osman had to be removed
because he was seen as too cozy with the colonizers.
So again, we see Sadat not as a statesman, not
as a politician, but as a hardline revolutionary.
He is comfortable with violence. He is comfortable
operating in the dark. Which eventually pays
off for him. 1952, the free officers make their
move. They overthrow King Farouk. And here's
a piece of trivia I absolutely love. who announces
the revolution to the world. It was Sadat. It
was Sadat. Nasser chose him to read the first
communique over the radio. He was literally the
voice of the revolution. So the king is gone.
Nasser eventually becomes the president, this
titan of pan -Arabism. I mean, Nasser was like
Elvis in the Arab world, just a colossal figure.
Where does that leave Sadat? Yeah, in the shadows
again. He becomes the loyal number two. He holds
a lot of titles. Minister of State, editor of
the state newspaper Al -Gumhuriyah, Speaker of
the National Assembly, Vice President. A whole
resume. A whole resume. But he's always, always
careful never to outshine the master. And the
source suggests that this loyalty or maybe this
apparent subservience led people to underestimate
him in a big way. Drastically. When Nasser dies
suddenly of a heart attack in 1970, Sadat succeeds
him constitutionally. But the power brokers in
Cairo, the intelligence cheese, the party leaders,
the deep state of that time, they viewed Sadat
as a poodle, a total puppet. They thought, great,
we've got this weak guy in the chair. We can
run the country from behind the curtain and he'll
just sign the papers. And that was the fatal
miscalculation of the entire Nazarist elite because
the puppet was about to cut all the strings in
the most dramatic way possible. Absolutely. This
leads us to 1971. The Corrective Revolution.
I've always found that name fascinating. It sounds
so bureaucratic, like a tax adjustment. It does.
We're just correcting a ledger. But it was coup,
wasn't it? It was a counter coup, a preemptive
strike. Sadat knew these guys. Vice President
Alyssa Brie, Interior Minister Shirawi Goma were
plotting to get rid of him. They were bugging
his phones. They controlled the police. So he
had to move first. So on May 15th, 1971, he moved
first. But how does a supposedly weak president
take down the guys who control the secret police
and the army? Well, he went directly to the people.
And he used the presidential guard, which was
loyal to him. He announced a correction of the
revolution's path. He arrested the jailers. He
purged the government of these centers of power.
It was a master class in political survival.
He basically decapitated the entire political
leadership of the country in one afternoon. He
did. But here is the twist that the source highlights.
And this is the thing that haunts Egypt to this
day. To defeat these Nazarists. who were generally
secular socialists and left -wing. Sadat needed
a counterweight on the street. He needed an ally.
Right. He didn't have his own base yet. The Nasserites
controlled the unions and the party. So who hates
the secular socialists? The Islamists. The Islamists.
The Muslim Brotherhood. Nasser had spent years
crushing the Brotherhood. Crushing them, filling
the jails with them, hanging their leaders like
Sayyid Qatbi. Sadat did a complete 180. He opened
the prison doors. He gave them oxygen. He encouraged
Islamist student groups on university campuses
to literally beat back the leftists. He thought
he could use them as a tool. A classic divide
and rule tactic. He thought he could turn the
tap on and off. He gave them cultural autonomy,
allowed them to publish magazines, let them organize.
He viewed them as this sort of conservative bulwark
that would support his presidency against the
communists and Nazarists. And it's the law of
unintended consequences in action. He's planting
the seeds that will eventually grow into the
very movement that kills him. Exactly. It seemed
brilliant in 1971. It was fatal by 1981. But
in the moment, it worked. He consolidated power
domestically. And once he had the house in order,
he looked outward. Because he had a massive,
massive problem. The Sinai. Right. We have to
set the stage here to understand the pressure
he was under. In 1967, you had the Six -Day War.
Israel devastates the Arab armies and occupies
the entire Sinai Peninsula. And for Egypt, this
wasn't just a loss of territory. The source describes
it as a total humiliation. A psychic wound. The
Egyptian military, which had been hyped up as
the strongest in the region, just collapsed in
days. Sadat knew he could not govern, could not
be a real president, as long as Israeli troops
were sitting on the east bank of the Suez Canal
looking at him with binoculars. But the conventional
wisdom at the time was that Egypt couldn't fight.
The Soviets, who were supplying Egypt with weapons,
didn't think they were ready. The Americans didn't
think they'd dare. And Sadat does something really
interesting here. He kicks out the Soviet military
advisors in 1972. There were thousands of them
in Egypt. Which seems so counterintuitive. If
you're planning a war, why on earth would you
kick out your superpower patron? It was a signal.
He was telling the world, I am my own man. And
practically, he wanted the freedom to act without
Moscow holding him back or, you know, vetoing
his plans. He was clearing the decks for war.
October 6th, 1973, Yom Kippur. The holiest day
in the Jewish calendar. Israel is completely
shut down. The radio is off. Reservists are in
synagogues. It was the ultimate element of surprise.
And Sadat launches Operation Badir. It was a
logistical marvel. We often gloss over the military
details, but crossing the Suez Canal was considered
nearly impossible. Israel had built the Bar Lev
line, these massive sand ramparts, fortified
bunkers, napalm pipes. It was supposed to be
impenetrable. The source mentions the water cannons.
That's the detail that always sticks with me.
High -pressure water pumps. They used them to
just... blast away the sand berms because explosives
wouldn't work fast enough. It was an engineering
solution to a military problem. So they breached
the line. Egyptian troops pour into the Sinai.
They advance about 15 kilometers. The psychological
impact of this cannot be overstated. The invincible
Israeli army had been caught sleeping. The Arab
world just exploded with joy. Sadat instantly
became the hero of the crossing. He restored
the dignity that was lost in 67. He did, but...
The war didn't end on day one, and the map didn't
stay that way. No, and this is where the narrative
gets really complicated. The Israelis mobilize.
They are, at this point, fighting for their survival.
General Ariel Sharon leads a counterattack. And
they find a gap, a gap between the Egyptian Second
and Third Armies. And they do their own crossing.
They cross back over to the west bank of the
canal. The African side. So suddenly you have
the Egyptian Third Army completely encircled.
Israeli tanks are 101 kilometers from Cairo.
It goes from this massive triumph to a near -death
experience for the regime. It was on a knife
edge. The superpowers had to step in. Nuclear
tensions were spiking between the U .S. and USSR.
We get U .N. Resolution 338, and finally the
fighting stops. Militarily, by the end, it's
a stalemate. Or you could even argue a tactical
advantage for Israel. But Sadat spins it. He
was a master of that. He understood that war
is just politics by other means. He didn't need
to conquer Tel Aviv. He just needed to prove
that the status quo was unsustainable. He needed
to shake the table enough to get the Americans'
attention. And that he did. This is the pivot.
This is the moment where the script just completely
flips. The man who was cozy with German agents
in the 40s, the man who launched a surprise war,
now decides that peace is the only way forward.
He realizes that the Soviets can give him weapons,
but only the Americans can give him back his
land because only the Americans have real leverage
over Israel. So he starts courting Washington.
And the source points out he was incredibly savvy
about this. He didn't just talk to the White
House and the diplomats. No, he went to the American
people. He executed this brilliant PR campaign.
He courted the evangelical Christians. He invited
Billy Graham to Egypt. Just wild to think about
an Egyptian Muslim president hosting the most
famous American evangelist for an official state
visit. He understood the power of religious imagery
in America. He went to the Vatican. He was building
this moral coalition in the West to portray himself
not as a warmonger, but as a man of faith seeking
peace. And then the move that just shocked the
entire world, November 1977, he announces he
is willing to go to the Nesset. To the Israeli
parliament in Jerusalem. We have to understand
how taboo this was. No Arab leader had ever recognized
Israel publicly, let alone visited. It was considered
absolute political suicide in the Arab world.
But he goes, I've seen the archival footage,
him walking down the stairs of the plane, shaking
hands with Golda Meir and Menachem Begin, the
people he was at war with just four years prior.
And he stood at the podium in the Nesset and
he spoke directly to the Israeli people. He offered
full peace, full recognition. In exchange for
the land, he broke that psychological barrier.
And this leads directly to Camp David. 1978,
Jimmy Carter basically locks Sadat and Begin
in a cabin in the woods. For 13 grueling days,
there were bags packed and unpacked multiple
times. But they come out with the Camp David
Accords. And in 1979, the official Egypt -Israel
Peace Treaty. Let's just look at the balance
sheet of that treaty. What did Sadat actually
get out of it? He got the Sinai back. Every single
inch of it. the oil fields, the resorts, the
strategic depth. He got the land. And crucially,
he got massive American economic and military
aid, which continues to this day. And what did
he give up? He gave Israel legitimacy. He broke
the Arab Unified Front. Egypt, the largest and
most powerful Arab nation, effectively resigned
from the war against Israel. Without Egypt, there
is no major Arab war option. It's over. And for
this, he gets the Nobel Peace Prize. He gets
the Prince of Peace Award from Pat Robertson.
The West absolutely loves him. He is the darling
of Western media. But at home and in the neighborhood,
it's a catastrophe. The source says Egypt was
suspended from the Arab League. Kicked out. The
Arab League actually moved its headquarters from
Cairo to Tunis. Imagine the U .N. moving out
of New York because they hate the U .S. president.
That's the level of isolation. He was called
a traitor, a sellout, a complete break from the
Nasserist dream of pan -Arab unity. A total betrayal
in their eyes. And domestically, things weren't
much better. We had to talk about the bread riots.
This was in 1977, right before the peace push
really culminated. But it sets the context for
his domestic weakness. Sadat was trying to liberalize
the economy. a policy he called infita, or opening
up. He wanted to move away from master's socialism
toward a more Western -style market economy.
Which sounds good on paper to the IMF and foreign
investors. But the reality on the ground was
high inflation and a new class of flashy, wealthy
cronies appearing, the fat cats, while the poor
got poorer. And when he tried to list subsidies
on bread to balance the budget, the country just
exploded. Hundreds of thousands of people in
the streets, they were chanting, hero of the
crossing, where's... our breakfast. It was a
direct attack on his legitimacy. The army had
to be deployed to save the regime. Sadat had
to back down and reinstate the subsidies. But
it showed that his popularity was brittle. He
was being squeezed, economic desperation at home,
political isolation abroad. And in the middle
of all this, he makes a personal decision that
seems almost designed to antagonize his enemies
even further. He takes in the Shah. The Shah
of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This is such
a fascinating subplot in the source. Nasser hated
the Shah. They were bitter enemies. But Sadat
and the Shah became genuine friends. Dear brother,
the Shah called him. Sadat admired the Shah's
modernizing vision. And when the Iranian revolution
happens in 1979, the Shah is overthrown. He's
flying around the world, dying of cancer, and
nobody wants him. The U .S. doesn't want him.
Europe doesn't want him. They're all afraid of
angering the new regime in Tehran. But Sadat
says, come to Egypt. He viewed it as a matter
of honor and loyalty to a friend. He gave him
asylum. And when the Shah died, Sadat gave him
a full state funeral in Cairo and buried him
in a prestigious mosque. Now you have to put
yourself in the shoes of the Islamists in Egypt,
the guys Sadat let out of jail back in 71. They
were watching the Iranian revolution with awe.
They see an Islamic leader overthrow a secular
tyrant. And what does their own president do?
He honors the tyrant. He honors the tyrant. It
was like waving a red cape in front of a bull.
To the Islamists, Sadat was now a triple traitor.
He made peace with the Zionist entity. He failed
to implement Sharia law. And he honored the enemy
of the Islamic revolution. The boiler is about
to burst. And Sadat senses it. In September 1981,
he tries to put the genie back in the bottle.
The September arrests. It was a desperate, flailing
crackdown. He didn't just arrest Islamists. He
arrested everyone. Liberals, communists, the
Coptic pope, feminists, student leaders, journalists.
1 ,500 people dragged off to jail in just a few
days. He was trying to silence the entire country.
He revoked the licenses of independent publications.
He was trying to force stability. But he missed
a cell, a small cell within the military itself.
And that is the terrifying part of the security
failure. The danger wasn't just in the mosques
or the universities. It was in the barracks.
October 6, 1981. The anniversary of his greatest
triumph. The victory parade. Sadat is sitting
in the reviewing stand. He's wearing his field
marshal uniform. He's surrounded by dignitaries.
Jets are flying overhead performing acrobatics.
It's a celebration of him and his achievement.
And a truck towing an artillery piece stops right
in front of the stand. Lieutenant Khalid al -Islambouli.
He's in the truck. He's a member of Egyptian
Islamic Jihad, a radical offshoot that had infiltrated
the army. The source says when the soldiers jumped
out, Sadat actually stood up. He thought they
were coming to salute him. He actually said,
what are these boys doing? He stood up to receive
their greeting. It just shows how disconnected
he was from the threat. And they opened fire.
It wasn't just an assassination. It was a massacre
in the stands. Automatic weapons, grenades. Sadat
was hit multiple times. Eleven others died, including
a Cuban ambassador and an Omani general. Vice
President Hosni Mubarak was sitting right next
to him and somehow survived with only minor injuries.
Sadat dies later that afternoon. The man who
survived British prisons, who plotted coups,
who gambled on war and peace, taken out by his
own lieutenant. And the funeral. The funeral
tells the entire story of his legacy. The source
highlights this contrast, and it's really the
defining image of his life. Who showed up? The
West showed up. Three former U .S. presidents,
Nixon, Ford, Carter. Prime Minister Begin of
Israel was there. He famously walked part of
the way because it was the Sabbath. Yeah. European
royalty. The world mourned him as a visionary.
But the Arab world. Silence. Yeah. Just silence.
Only three out of 24 Arab League states sent
representatives. Sudan was the only Arab head
of state to attend. And the streets of Cairo.
The streets of Cairo, which had been packed with
millions of weeping people when Nasser died.
People climbing lampposts just to see the coffin.
Were eerie. They were largely quiet. That is
a chilling image. A state funeral attended by
the world but ignored by the neighbors. He died
isolated. He had moved too fast, too far for
his own region to catch up. He was a prophet
without honor in his own land in a very, very
literal sense. Before we wrap up, I want to touch
briefly on how his image has been processed in
pop culture. Because there's a controversy there
that the source flags, which brings us all the
way back to his origins. Right. The 1983 miniseries
Sadat, starring Louis Gossett Jr. A phenomenal
actor. Oh, he is. But the Egyptian government
banned the film. They cited historical inaccuracies,
but the source notes that the Western perception
was that race played a role. Gossett Jr. is African
American. And we're back to his mother. Yeah.
And his Sudanese heritage. Exactly. Sadat was
dark -skinned, but identity in Egypt is complex.
He identified as Egyptian, as Arab. For some
in the Egyptian establishment, having a black
American actor portray him was seen as problematic,
as recasting him outside of his specific Arab
identity. It just adds another layer to his complexity.
He's a man who never quite fit into a single
box. Not racially, not politically. And then
you have The Days of Sadat in 2001, the Egyptian
film with Ahmad Zaki, which was a massive hit.
He was finally reclaimed by his own culture,
but on their terms. And we can't forget Garrett
Morris on Saturday Night Live. Which is funny.
But it also shows he had reached that level of
global icon status where you become a sketch
comedy character in New York. So bringing it
all home. We started by calling him a contradiction.
And I think the evidence, well, it supports that.
He was a poor boy from the Delta who became the
president. A fascist sympathizer who became a
Nobel Peace Prize winner. A dictator who brought
peace. And a master tactician who eventually
ran out of moves. Why does this story matter
today? If you're listening to this in 2026, why
care about Anwar Sadat? Because the Middle East
you see on the news every single night. The alliance
between Egypt and the U .S., the cold peace between
Egypt and Israel, the struggle between military
regimes and Islamist movements, it all starts
with him. He wrote the code for the modern operating
system of the region. And that tension, the idea
of using radicals to fight your political enemies.
That is the cautionary tale. Sadat thought he
was smart enough to ride the tiger. He thought
he could let the Islamists out of the cage, use
them to scare the leftists, and then just put
them back when he was done. But the tiger got
hungry. It raises the question that every leader
should ask themselves. Is it ever really possible
to control a radical movement once you've given
it oxygen? Sadat bet his life that he could,
and he lost. That is a heavy thought to end on.
From the village of Mit Abu El -Kham to the history
books, Anwar Sadat. Thanks for diving deep with
us. Always a pleasure. We'll catch you on the
next one.