This is a first-rate foreign policy disaster on a par with Carter and Iran. Meanwhile Hillary is still driving the State Department clown car around the tent beeping her own horn incessantly and 0bama is threatening to dislocate his shoulder patting himself on the back for the ludicrously termed Arab Spring. U.S. interests lost in Libya, Egypt, and now look to make it a trifecta in Syria. If there is a worse way to screw up U.S. foreign policy I don't know it, but I have faith they'll find it.
Getting the Navy kicked out of Bahrain?
I wonder about some of the things you wrote. Not as a matter of contesting them, but in terms of thinking through them. This with the only sure knowledge being that it is impossible to predict what will occur in that part of the world EXCEPT: that it is like a pinball machine, a tilted table, where all roads ultimately lead to the ball falling thru the flippers, which in this (and all other) cases means an Islamist government.
It’s indeed the Egyptian Army on the border, AFAIK. It seems to me that the best way for the nascent (not really) MB regime in Egypt to demonstrate its power is to stage a war with Israel. This would be entirely typical for moron despots. On the surface, the force involved would be the Egyptian army but it also seems like a strong possibility that “genuine” Egyptians would rather not go to war. Thus, as you posit, perhaps the force that would go to war would be a hollowed out army, with Al Queda and/or Hezbolleh-figureheads in command. Such a force is not used to operating as a normal army and perhaps Israel would take the time to terminate them with extreme prejudice, which is what I would do in their place. There will be loads of Palestinians taking up arms as well.
I can tell you that should Egypt start something, there would be little mercy coming from the Israeli side. Israel has to watch out for a pan-Arab attack IMHO.
I don’t know if you see things unfurling along those lines. I *do* think Israel could find itself once again under assault from multiple directions, on multiple fronts.
On par with Carter and Iran? No way, this is several orders of magnitude worse. The entire Arab Spring has been a boon to radicals. The map of the ME is an Islamists dream and when they dream their dreams the world is in a nightmare.