AHC: Best possible Egypt?

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create the most stable and prosperous you can with a POD any time after the beginning of World War 1. It doesn't have to be secular or powerful, but those would be nice bonuses.
 
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I'd prefer to begin c 1950 with the Free Officers. After dumping Farouk in '52, for the most part, don't adopt socialist policies. A relationship with the USSR is OK and so is nationalizing the canal and helping Algerian rebels--even at the risk of provoking Britain, France and Israel. But establish a MLR farther west than OTL, in the western defiles of Sinai not the frontier. And tell the troops holding some hotel in Port Said(?) to hold their fire so the British and French commanders will walk right in and be captured-it almost happened OTL and would've been a tremendous propaganda bonanza if it did.
After the three attacking countries withdraw, for the next decade, don't get bogged down in Yemen. Send only a few thousand troops and offer to withdraw them permanently in exchange for saudi cash and a promise not to back the muslim brotherhood. Hold training maneuvers in Sinai. Either don't provoke the '67 war but try to do two things before an eventual confrontation: Keep Egypt's population from rising above 25 million so the country doesn't have to import food, or waste a lot on subsidies, and establish ties with Ghadafy's Libya after his '69 coup. Agree to ghadafy's merger scheme to get full access to Libyan $$, but have Egyptian intelligence get rid of ghadafy and replace him with someone Cairo can control.
By 1970, invest in the best possible Soviet and (if possible) European weapons. Including TU-22s, and Jaguars if possible. Build shelters to protect them and other aircraft.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create the most stable and prosperous you can with a POD at the beginning of World War 1. It doesn't have to be secular or powerful, but those would be nice bonuses.

The puppet Egyptian Monarchy is given control over much of the British stuff under Sykes-Picot, as their way of legitimising local rule. Eventually "Egypt"/Britain move in on the Syrian Mandate against the Vichy regime and against "Free" France and in agreement with the Hashemites Egypt becomes Arabia, with Hashemite Viceroys of Jordan, Iraq and all of Arabia while "Egypt" directly controls OTL Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and the Mandate for Palestine is turned into an autonomous home for Jews and Christians with most of the Arabic Christians and others moving there and the Muslims there dispersing across this new nation.

PoD would be sometime during WW1 with Lawrence and the Hashemites forming this long winded arrangement with the Egyptians/British for this plan and both the Indian Office and Foreign Office agreeing to it.

Egypt might lose the Hashemite viceroyalties at some point, but we have Muhammed Ali Pasha's dream at least and much larger industrial base. Also a bit of an Islam-wank as you avoid the Wahhabism that occurred in OTL but probably still have their place taken over a bit by Deobandi clerics etc, probably see a Middle East more like the 1970s regimes with a lot more of a liberal culture. Due to the British giving lots of local rule we probably see this state remaining a part of the Commonwealth but having the same kind of place in it that India has today, either that or decolonisation just happens more peacefully here and full ties are broken off in terms of agreements like that. Egypt occupies a geopolitical situation similar to India in terms of military and regional/world power but is more like France or Germany in terms of economic power.

This should count as a best possible Egypt, but that is based of interpreting the question as talking about the place and people rather than the nation state, as while Egypt still exists the nation-state of Egypt has evolved into something new. It also depends on whether or not you think Western values are better that this theory sees this PoD as better because you probably might want something else if you prefer "Islamic" values.
 
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