The startling transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state this past summer has left journalists scrambling to make sense of what is happening in the Middle East.

The fact that the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is now calling for imminent regime change in Shiite-dominated Syria is prompting many journalists—such as bbc Iran correspondent James Reynolds—to predict that Egypt is emerging as a Sunni counterweight to Iranian hegemony in the region.

Journalist Fouad Ajami—writing for the online Tablet website—went so far as to predict that the Muslim Brotherhood would follow the example of Hosni Mubarak and bury its differences with Saudi Arabia in order to fight the Iranian Shiite enemy.

The plain truth, however, is that any analysis of Middle Eastern politics that puts all the Sunnis on one side of the fence and all the Shiites on the other is over-simplifying the matter.

While it is true that many Sunni sects—such as the Salafist movement and the Wahhabi movement—are fiercely opposed to Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates are actually more aligned with Shiite Iran than they are to most Sunni Arab regimes.

The reasons of the affinity between the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran are three-fold:

Reason 1: The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran share a common passion for political Islamism.

The original split between Sunni and Shiite Islam took place in 664 a.d., after the second caliph of the Islamic Umma was murdered by his Persian slave. In the aftermath of this murder, all the Islamic electors agreed that the successor should come from within the Hashemite clan, but some supported Muhammad’s son-in-law Othman and some supported Muhammad’s cousin Ali.

The succession eventually went to Othman, but the supporters of Ali resented this fact, saying that Othman should not rule the caliphate because he was only related to Muhammad by marriage, whereas Ali was related by blood.

Those who supported Othman eventually referred to themselves as the “people of the tradition of Muhammad and the consensus of the Umma” or as the “Sunnis.“

These supporters of Ali simply referred to themselves as the “faction of Ali” or as the Shiites.

After Shiite supporters murdered Othman in 657, the Islamic Caliphate erupted into a civil war that eventually split mainstream Islam into two branches—with the Shiites claiming that only direct descendents of Ali had the authority to rule and the Sunnis (for the most part) claiming that any man who embraced the tenants of Sunni Islam could be accepted as a ruler.

The Twelfth Ruler (Imam) of the Shiites, however, disappeared without a descendant in 941, leaving the Shiites without a leader. Thus it became a central tenant of Shiite Islam that there could be no central religious authority until the Twelfth Imam returned as the Mahdi at the time of the end.

So, from the time of the Crusades until fairly recently, radical Islamism has been asleep in the Middle East. The Sunnis were content to accept the authority of practically any moderate Arab ruler who claimed to accept the authority of Allah, and the Shiites were content to wait patiently until the Twelfth Imam returned.

All of this began to change, however, with the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The basic Shiite tenant that only a direct descendent of Ali could exercise religious authority was problematic for Khomeini, because his main goal was to establish an Islamic theocracy in Iran. So, in his book on Islamic government, Khomeini claimed that while neither he nor any other cleric were the equivalent of the imams, they could still create an Islamic government by following the laws of Islam.

This fundamental shift in Iranian Shiite philosophy made monarchy and all other forms of non-theocratic government illegitimate in the eyes of the ayatollahs. It also brought Khomeini’s brand of Shiite philosophy much closer in line with the political philosophies of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as an effort to preserve Egypt as an Islamic society after the disbanding of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924. Thus, it abandoned the traditional Sunni belief that any monarch could reign who claimed that Allah was God and Muhammad was the seal of the prophets. Instead, it sought to establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt similar in style to the Islamic theocracy that Ayatollah Khomeini would later establish in Iran.

According to veteran of U.S. Naval Intelligence Samuel Helfont, the Muslim Brotherhood eventually incorporated several of Khomeini’s ideas into its political platform so it could justify Sunni clerical leadership of an Islamic state.

For example, in 2007, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood put forth a political calling for the formation of a Council of Clerics—reminiscent of Iran’s Guardian Council—that would ensure the legislative and executive branches of government do not implement laws contrary to sharia law.

This is why Iran has supported the Egyptian, the Libyan and the Palestinian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood for so many years. Even though significant theological differences still exist between the ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood clerics, their views on Islamic government are much more akin to each other than they are to those of the Sunni Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf region.

So, on a preliminary level at least, the basic Sunni-Shiite rift concerning Islamic governance has been healed between the various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.

The one exception is the relationship between Iran and the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Since Syria was ruled by a Shiite dictator, Iran never gave the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood the same support it gave the Egyptian Brotherhood (when it was struggling against Hosni Mubarak) or the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood (when it was struggling against Muammar Qadhafi).

Despite its disagreement with the Muslim Brotherhood over Syria, however, it is certain that Iran will continue to support Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamist movements in Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Ethiopia. In the eyes of the Iranian ayatollahs, it is far better that these nations be ruled by Muslim Brotherhood clerics sympathetic to their brand of political Islamism than it is for them to be ruled by native dictators or Arab nationalists.

The second reason the Muslim Brotherhood is more aligned with Shiite Iran than it is with most of the Middle Eastern Sunni Arab regimes is:

Reason 2: The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran share a common hatred of Israel and the United States.

Traditional Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia definitely possess an enduring hatred for the State of Israel, but they have a much more complicated relationship with other Western-oriented nations.

Even though Saudi Arabia has been known to treacherously finance terrorism on some level, it is also a major oil exporter to Western nations as well as a military bulwark against more radical Middle Eastern regimes.

Other Arab states in the Persian Gulf region, such as the United Arab Emirates, have also spoken out from time to time against Israel and the United States, but have loathed Iranian talk of striking out against the West by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz simply because they derive so much of their exorbitant wealth from trade.

Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have been far more outspoken against Israel and America—saying that Jerusalem must be conquered and Israel wiped off the map.

In the weeks after Hosni Mubarak’s fall, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusef Qaradawi led 1 million Egyptians in Friday prayers in saying, “I harbor the hope that just like Allah allowed me to witness the triumph in Egypt, he will allow me to witness the conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque and will enable me to preach in the al-Aqsa Mosque.” At this point the crowd burst forth with enthusiastic chants: “To Jerusalem we go, for us to be the martyrs of the millions; to Jerusalem we go, for us to be the martyrs of the millions.”

Qaradawi—who was once asked to be the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood—has gone on record as saying he hates Jews and has asked Allah to kill “every last one” of them. In 2009, he said,

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.

Such statements align with those made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and with those made by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has said Iran will help “cut out the cancer of Israel.”

While there are undoubtedly many Muslims in Turkey and Saudi Arabia who agree with these statements, these nations are likely to bide their time and not jeopardize their oil revenues. Both Qaradawi and Ahmadinejad, however, have made it abundantly clear that they want Israel destroyed within their lifetime.

So, really there are three camps in the Middle East: 1) the radical Shiite camp led by Iran, 2) the radical Muslim Brotherhood camp led by Egypt, and 3) the traditional Sunni monarchies led by Saudi Arabia.

This brings up the third reason the Muslim Brotherhood will be more closely aligned with Shiite Iran than with the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf region:

Reason 3: Bible prophecy foretells that Egypt will ally against Saudi Arabia.

Biblical passages such as Daniel 11 tell of an ancient clash between the Syrian-based Seleucid Empire (referred to as the king of the north) and the Egyptian-based Ptolemaic Empire (referred to as the king of the south). Verse 40 of this same chapter further reveals that this is a dual prophecy that will have a second fulfillment in the time of the end.

Other passages, such as Psalm 83, show us that during this end-time clash, Syria will be allied with a German-led revival of the Holy Roman Empire (along with other traditional Sunni Arab states like Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia). This treacherous alliance will fulfill its dream of destroying Israel while at the same time keeping its oil revenues from Europe intact. Since Syria, the ancient king of the north, is subservient to Germany in this alliance, Germany will be the primary power that inherits the end-time title of “king of the north.”

Read the cover story of the September edition of the Trumpet magazine for a full description of the modern-day identities of the nations listed in Psalm 83.

This German-led alliance of Sunni Arab states will also strike out again the end-time king of the south. Current world news events show that this king of the south will be an Iranian-led Islamic confederation composed of the radicalized Middle Eastern nations not listed in Psalm 83.

Daniel 11 tells us that the Egyptians, Libyans and Ethiopians will be allied with this power. Yet just as Germany is the end-time king of the north due to the fact that it rules over Syria (the ancient king of the north), Iran will be the end-time king of the south due to the fact that it dominates over Egypt (the ancient king of the south).

As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry recently wrote in an editorial titled “Egypt Unites With Iran and Fulfills a Bible Prophecy,” it will be a Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt that brings the radical Sunni regimes of North Africa into the Iranian camp.

With the traditional Sunni regimes of the Persian Gulf region increasingly looking to Germany for armaments and the radical Sunni regimes of North Africa increasingly looking to Iran for support, events in the Middle East are on the verge of starting World War iii—and bringing about the end of the age of human rule on this Earth!