(CNN) – CNN Cairo went to the beach Monday. It was not, alas, a day of rest. We assembled at 2 a.m. at the headquarters of the Egyptian Army's "Morale Guidance" Bureau, from where we were bussed, an hour later, to the northern coast to cover the 2009 Brightstar Exercises.

This year 17,000 troops from Egypt, the United States, Jordan, Pakistan, Germany, Italy, and Kuwait - to name a few - are taking part.

These military exercises have been conducted every two years since 1981.

There is a certain predictability about these affairs. The officers, whatever the country, are all upbeat, talking about cooperation, partnership and mutual respect.

But in the end, these are war games: A rehearsal for something to which other, far less lofty terms come to mind. The officers we interviewed - Americans and Egyptians - speak in glowing adjectives, but dodge questions about what or whom the exercises are preparing for.

I covered Brightstar 10 years ago. Back then it was also all about partnership and cooperation. But in the combat operations room of the USS John F. Kennedy, I had a premonition of what was to come. On a map of clear plastic, written in magic marker over Baghdad were the words: "Target: Saddam."

Ten years later Saddam is gone; U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, while targets have been hit in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.

Voices have been raised in the U.S. – though more loudly and insistently in Israel - calling for military action against Iran, which is accused by some of pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Back in 1999 it was fairly clear that sooner or later the U.S. and its allies would, somehow or other, bring down Saddam Hussein. After September 11, 2001, regardless of Iraq's non-involvement in those attacks, Saddam's days were running out.

I don't think, at this moment, an attack against Iran (by Israel, by the U.S., or both) is as inevitable as Saddam Hussein's demise. But the possibility is there.

As the sun rose over the desert, I watched three C17 "Globemasters," which had flown straight from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, drop hundreds of paratroopers - mostly Americans along with a few Egyptians and Pakistanis. Later, a pair of American Cobra gunships provided air support as three huge U.S. Navy hovercraft disgorged a dozen armored humvees on a beautiful Mediterranean beach, already "secured" by U.S., Egyptian, Pakistani and Jordanian troops.

It was an impressive display of force and hardware, as well as cooperation and partnership. However it's easy to see from the weapons on display who is the senior "partner."

Sitting in the press bus on my way back to Cairo typing this with my thumbs on a blackberry, I wonder if, as the American and Egyptian officers told us, the Brightstar exercises aren't designed for a specific threat then what is the point?

SANAA, Yemen - A diplomatic source told me Wednesday's attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen involved two car bombs and three suicide bombers with explosives belts, one of whom blew himself up just meters away from the embassy's main gate.

Attackers disguised as Yemeni forces bombed the outer wall of the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa.

The entire attack, he said, lasted 15 minutes and left 16 dead - five Yemeni security forces, one Yemeni U.S. embassy guard who was shot by the assailants when he tried to bar the first vehicle from entering the embassy parking lot, six of the attackers and four civilians, including an 18-year-old Yemeni-American woman from Buffalo, New York.

Yemeni government security guards outside the embassy told me the attack was by "cowards" who kill innocent people. We saw several people who appeared to be U.S. investigators surveying and photographing the damage.

We were allowed into the area by Yemeni security officials who didn't coordinate with the Americans. One of the investigators exclaimed to another (and I overheard) "Who the f***k allowed CNN in here?"

Shortly afterwards a security officer from the embassy told us to leave the area directly in front of the embassy because we were endangering the evidence, although dozens of Yemeni troops were milling around the area.

She told the CNN crew to go to the other side of the barrier in front of the embassy, "up against the wall" on the other side of the street.

Today, the atmosphere in Sanaa is calm, the streets are quiet and of course it's Ramadan, so it's quiet on top of quiet.

CAIRO, Egypt – A friend is behind bars. Wednesday evening Egyptian security personnel arrested George Ishaq, a leading figure in the Egyptian democracy movement, at his home in Cairo. No formal charges have been filed, so it’s not clear at this point why and for how long he will be detained.

I met George four years ago while covering a demonstration by Kifaya—which in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic means Enough—outside the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo. Kifaya is a small but vocal group bringing together activists from across the political spectrum, from old school Marxists to Islamists, joined by a common desire to see an end—thus their slogan—to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, in power since October 1981.

 I saw George again and again at similar events, where protesters were often outnumbered ten to one by riot police and plain-clothed policemen clutching rubber truncheons.

At first glance George doesn’t look like a political firebrand determined to bring down the regime. George is a bespectacled former school teacher in his sixties with a shock of white hair and an unwavering, mischievous smile. He possesses that unique Egyptian ability to combine biting humour aimed at the high and mighty with razor sharp political analysis, his observations on contemporary Egypt always on the mark, often funny but deeply saddening at the same time.

In an interview when his movement was at its height, George told me “The door [to democracy] is open and nobody can close it again. We will go through this door and we will struggle until the end, to be a democratic country. We will insist on it.”

But his determination to bring about change has been met by an even more uncompromising determination by the Mubarak regime to hold on to power.

George’s arrest is just the latest in a campaign by the Egyptian government leading up to the municipal elections held on Tuesday. More than a thousand members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were rounded up, plus, according to Kifaya, around 50 of its members.

The vote was met with indifference by most of the population, disillusioned by decades of rigged, sham elections. The same day, Egyptians were shocked (and some thrilled) by photos circulating on the internet of angry striking workers in the industrial town of Mahalla Al-Kubra destroying a billboard featuring a picture of President Mubarak.

A Coptic Christian, George identifies himself first and foremost as an Egyptian patriot, a man profoundly committed to a tolerant Egypt which, alas, is slowly disappearing, a country fiercely proud of its profoundly rich culture stretching back thousands and thousands of years, the Arab world’s cultural and political centre of gravity, where literature and music and theatre and art flourished.

Today Egypt is impoverished, economically and politically, its cultural life a mere shadow of what existed fifty or sixty years ago.

But the spirit of Egypt—and an unflagging optimism that Egypt will rise again—is kept alive by people like George. Even if he is behind bars.

CAIRO, Egypt – There’s a typically subversive joke making the rounds in Cairo and it goes like this:

A man is sitting in his car in the usual Cairo traffic jam, when someone comes up and knocks on the car window.

Egyptian riot police beat a protester with batons, during anti government protests in the city of Mahalla.

“President Mubarak has been kidnapped and his kidnappers say unless a billion dollar ransom is paid they’ll douse him with petrol and set him alight. So we’re collecting donations.”

“Ok,” replies the man in the car. “On average, what are people paying?”

“Five to ten litres,” replies the other.

That the popularity of the Mubarak regime is at an all time low is taken for granted in the streets of Cairo. Hosni Mubarak has been in power since October 1981 following the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat.

Dramatically rising food prices (which have almost doubled since the start of the year), an ever more yawning gap between a tiny, fantastically wealthy elite and the vast majority of Egyptians (nearly forty percent of whom must try to get by on around two dollars a day), corruption, political stagnation and labour unrest all combine to make a very volatile situation that threatens to shake the monolithic Egyptian state.

“I don’t know what Mubarak is thinking,” a friend, whom I won’t identify for his own safety, told me when I was in Cairo two weeks ago. “Doesn’t he realise how bad things have become?”

Here’s another joke I heard: President Mubarak, who was an avid squash player in his younger years, is sitting with a group of his advisors.

“My friends,” he says, “I’m getting old and I don’t think I have much time left on this earth, so I need to know one thing: in heaven, do they play squash?”

“Mr President, we’ll look into it and get back to you as soon as possible,” replies his senior advisor.

The next day, the advisors return to the president.

“We have good news and we have bad news. Which do you want to hear first?” asks the senior advisor.

“The good news, please,” responds President Mubarak.

“The good news, Mr President, is that they do indeed have squash in heaven.”

“And the bad news?” asks a visibly relieved Mubarak.

“The bad news, Mr President, is that you have a game tomorrow.”

But after 27 years in power, many Egyptians suspect Mubarak is surrounded by advisors who don’t like to share the bad news, that Mubarak is completely out of touch with the harsh reality that is Egypt today.

Tuesday Egyptians are supposed to go to the polls to vote in municipal elections. I say ‘supposed’ because most probably will not. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best organised opposition group in Egypt announced Monday that they would boycott the elections due to the unprecedented level of harassment the security forces have meted out to them.

In the past few weeks around a thousand of their members have been jailed. The Brotherhood is technically illegal in Egypt because the constitution bans any political party based on religion. The Brotherhood has been tolerated over the years as a fact of life, and in late 2005 made stunning gains in parliamentary elections. Those elections alarmed not only the Mubarak regime, but also the United States, which had been pushing Mubarak to democratize.

Needless to say, after the Brotherhood’s gains, after the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006, the US is no longer a great fan of democracy in the Arab world, though American officials do on occasion pay lukewarm lip service to the idea.

Adding to the tensions surrounding the municipal elections is labour unrest, focused around the factory town of Mahalla Al-Kubra in the Nile Delta. Sunday workers, who have been agitating for a pay rise, fought with police. At least two protesters were killed. Clashes broke out again Monday evening, and pictures were broadcast of a crowd tearing down and kicking one of the ubiquitous billboards of Mubarak.

People in Egypt are increasingly drawing parallels between the situation today and that that existed in the lead up to the 1952 coup d’état that brought down the Egyptian monarchy. That monarchy, like the Mubarak regime, was plagued by corruption and was out of touch with ordinary Egyptians. Furthermore, it was facing an increasingly assertive Muslim Brotherhood, and widespread labour unrest: the same combination confronting President Mubarak.

But the Egyptian state—with its omnipresent and often oppressive security forces—is not easily shaken. Through violence, intimidation, and the occasional use of the carrot, Mubarak may be able to weather this political storm.

The potential for things to get out of hand, however, is still there. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country, is still for many the standard bearer for the Arab world. There’s a saying that where Egypt goes, the rest of the Arabs follow. And anyone familiar with the Arab world knows that the travails of contemporary Egypt—official corruption, dictatorship, political oppression, economic stagnation and growing public discontent—are ailments common to many countries in the region. If Egypt shakes, the rest of the region will feel the shivers.