After having orchestrated the July 3 coup that unseated Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the military regime now must crush his political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in order to remain in power. As part of its efforts, the interim government recently designated the Islamist movement a "terrorist organization." But stamping out the country's most organized political group could strengthen jihadists elsewhere in the state. And given Egypt's geopolitical position in the Middle East, what would otherwise be a domestic issue will have far-reaching international security implications.  

So far, jihadists have not responded kindly to the government's new designation for the Brotherhood. On Dec. 26, jihadists targeted a bus with a bomb in Cairo's Nasr City district. A few days earlier, they detonated an improvised explosive device in Mansourah, a city in the Egypt's Nile Delta region, killing 14 people.

The attacks reflect two distinct yet related problems for Cairo. First, the government must create order in the aftermath of its coup, and it must do so amid unrest from the Muslim Brotherhood. Second, the government must contend with eastern jihadists, who want to expand their area of operation from the Sinai to the mainland.

There are elements within the regime that want the Brotherhood eradicated entirely, and these elements are actually compounding Cairo's problems. While there probably are many disillusioned youth from the Muslim Brotherhood that have joined the ranks of jihadists, these elements have lumped the jihadist and Islamist movements together, using the recent attacks to validate their agenda of elimination.

The problem with this strategy is that it plays into the hands of the jihadists, who see an opportunity amid the present instability to advance their cause. The more the regime cracks down on the Brotherhood, the more room it gives to the jihadists to exploit the situation. In its efforts to suppress the Brotherhood, Cairo has already become more dependent on the support from the country's largest Salafist group, al-Nour. (Modern Salafism is based on an austere reinterpretation of Islam, calling for Muslims to return to the original teachings outlined in the Koran and the practices of the Prophet Mohammed as understood by the earliest generation.) But this, too, is problematic: When al-Nour advocated the July coup, it created divisions within Egypt's Salafist community. Now, a significant number of factions oppose the regime and are thus more likely to be overcome by jihadist sentiment  than the Brotherhood.

What makes this struggle even more dangerous is that the jihadists in Egypt are not simply focusing on Egypt. They are also trying to link the Egyptian crisis to the Gaza crisis, in which Hamas is caught in the middle of Egyptian, Israeli and Salafist-jihadist pressures. It is no coincidence that the bombings in Egypt take place at roughly the same time violence has flared up a the Gaza-Israel border.

The success of jihadists in Syria and in the wider region has emboldened Egypt's jihadists. By creating jihadist theaters in two major Arab states, jihadists hope to draw Israel into a regional conflict, which they believe will further weaken Cairo and Damascus. The Egyptian regime's domestic political needs could cause the Middle East to experience its worst crisis since the Arab Spring.