Egypt Is Building Ashraf Salem Zaher for the Presidency

The promotion was not routine

Zaher was born in 1968 and graduated from the Air Defence College in 1989. He advanced through the Air Defence Forces, commanded air defence in the Western Military Region and then moved into the institutions that select and educate Egypt’s future commanders.

He became director of the Military College and subsequently the first director of the consolidated Egyptian Military Academy. His official biography records an unusual combination of military and civilian preparation: military sciences, the Senior Commanders Course, a National Defence College fellowship, electrical engineering and a master’s degree in national strategy. Egyptian Ministry of Defence, Arabic

On January 19, 2023, Sisi personally promoted Zaher from major general to lieutenant general while he was still running the academy. The promotion placed an education commander in the same rank class as the officers commanding the Armed Forces’ largest operational institutions. Egyptian Presidency, Arabic

When he became defence minister three years later, the state-owned Al-Ahram described Zaher as the officer who had led “one of the political leadership’s most important visions”: the comprehensive reconstruction of how Egypt selects and prepares its officers. Al-Ahram, Arabic

That language matters. Egyptian state media does not accidentally associate a general with the political leadership’s central project.

The academy was Zaher’s trial government

The Egyptian Military Academy is no longer simply a school for officers. Under Zaher, it became a factory for the state itself.

The academy trained diplomatic attachés, teachers, technology specialists, religious leaders and civilian employees from across the Egyptian bureaucracy. Zaher was therefore not merely educating soldiers. He was supervising the selection, discipline and political formation of the people who would operate ministries, schools, embassies and public institutions.

In 2024, Zaher presided over the graduation of a new class of diplomatic attachés. He said the academy’s programmes were intended to build personnel for state institutions using the most advanced systems of training and preparation. Egyptian Ministry of Defence, Arabic

Sisi repeatedly brought Zaher into meetings far beyond conventional military education. The president placed him beside the education minister to supervise the selection and preparation of teachers. Egyptian Presidency, Arabic

He placed him beside the communications minister to develop young technology workers, entrepreneurs and participants in Egypt’s digital economy. Egyptian Presidency, Arabic

The academy trained hundreds of imams in programmes ordered by Sisi to develop religious communication and combat extremism. Egyptian State Information Service, Arabic

Running this system gave Zaher something few Egyptian generals possess: relationships across the civilian administration.

He has taught the generation that will manage Egypt in the 2030s.

He continued operating beyond the military

The academy could have disappeared from Zaher’s work once he became defence minister. Instead, its civilian mission expanded.

In June 2026, Zaher toured the academy accompanied by the ministers of transport, religious endowments, education and justice. He described the presence of promising civilian elites beside military cadets as “the beginning of a system of integration and cooperation” and “the cornerstone of building the human being.” Egyptian Ministry of Defence, Arabic

This was the language of national administration, not battlefield command.

Zaher also joined Sisi and the prime minister at a meeting of the National Training Academy’s trustees, placing the defence minister inside the civilian leadership-development system. Egyptian Presidency, Arabic

In April, he attended a presidential meeting about private investment and urban development at Galala. Nothing in that meeting required the operational expertise of an air-defence officer. It required the presence of a member of Sisi’s governing core. Egyptian Presidency, Arabic

The pattern is clear. Zaher is being taught to see Egypt as the presidency sees it: military security, personnel selection, religious messaging, education, technology, public investment and the production of loyal administrators.

The Armed Forces have already approved him

Egypt’s president formally appoints the defence minister, but he cannot choose that official alone. Article 234 requires the approval of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The 2019 constitutional amendments made that requirement permanent. Zaher’s appointment consequently carried two endorsements: Sisi selected him, and the military’s senior command accepted him. Al-Masry Al-Youm, Arabic

That is the decisive advantage over Mahmoud el-Sisi.

A future Egyptian president must satisfy the ruling family, the intelligence services and the military’s corporate command. Mahmoud satisfies the first two. Zaher can unite all three.

Why Sisi’s son will not inherit Egypt

Mahmoud el-Sisi is powerful enough to influence the succession but too dynastic to embody it.

In 2019, two General Intelligence Service sources told Mada Masr that Mahmoud’s growing visibility had damaged the image of both the president and his family. They said his prominence was becoming a clear threat to the stability of the regime itself. He was subsequently assigned to a long mission in Russia. Mada Masr, Arabic

Mahmoud later returned to the regime’s inner circle. That does not repair the political problem. It demonstrates it.

Egypt’s military helped end Hosni Mubarak’s rule partly because the rise of his civilian son Gamal threatened to transfer authority from the officer corps to a presidential family and its business allies. Carnegie’s study of Sisi’s system concludes that the Armed Forces regarded Gamal’s network as a challenger to their institutional position. Carnegie Endowment

A Mahmoud presidency would reopen the same conflict. It would also destroy the regime’s claim that Egypt remains a republic. The son of a president succeeding his father through an election managed by institutions his family controls would be understood internationally and domestically as hereditary rule.

Sisi does not need to take that risk. He can protect his family through a successor who owes his entire ascent to the current presidency.

Zaher is that successor.

Why the transfer comes in 2040

Sisi will not leave in 2030. The public preparation for another constitutional settlement has already begun. Egyptian establishment figures are now discussing either amending the present charter or writing an entirely new constitution capable of carrying the “New Republic” beyond Sisi’s current term. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Arabic

The first purpose of that settlement will be extension. Its second will be succession.

By 2040, Sisi will be 85. Zaher will be 72: an age that communicates seniority rather than ambition. He will have spent more than a decade at the summit of the Armed Forces, represented Egypt abroad, supervised the military leadership and built relationships across the civilian state.

He will also be able to guarantee what every ageing authoritarian ruler requires: personal security after office, protection for the family and preservation of the institutions constructed during his rule.

Mahmoud el-Sisi will help select the next president. He will not become that president.

Continuity without inheritance

Egypt will present Zaher as an institutional candidate—the soldier-educator who prepared officers, teachers, diplomats, imams and technology workers before commanding the Armed Forces. The election will be described as continuity chosen by the people. The military will describe it as stability. Sisi’s family will recognise it as protection.

The state will never publicly call this succession planning. It does not need to.

The résumé is already announcing the decision.