I know how it will work. Most likely nothing will happen. Egyptian regime is very fragile, and will not risk a foreign intervention while having to suppress monthly uprisings back home.
Egypt more than one occasion came close to doing something like that. Long story short. Who ever has better military capabilities will own the Nile.
Egypt can use Suez as another piece to get Europe to accept its bombing campaign.
Egypt can not use Suez, because the US, Europe and Israel will intervene for sure on that particular case against Egypt and Egypt will lose for sure.
If anything they will just dig a canal or create some route from Eilat port to Ashdod port and make some profit out of the whole situation.
Would they? GERD destruction = tsunami on the nile, possibly setting a chain reaction through downstream dams.
Sisi has now managed to beat even Murbarak on getting the lowest rating on record from any semblance of legit polls done nowadays.
Turkey is all over Ethiopia, and Sudan on top of that. And Sisi has a paranoid fear of Turkish involvement, either back home as a subversion, or a direct attack from Turkish African bases.
Turkey staring Sisi down from all sides is by far a much bigger concern to him than Ethiopians waving their MiG 21s at him.
If he has a gram of gray matter, he will not push Ethiopians further towards decision on Turkish military base.
IMHO, most likely result of an attack (for Egypt) is that Egypt loses a part of its airforce in return for temporarily harming Ethiopia's ability to generate electricity at the site. At which point Ethiopia fills the dam anyway and works on repairing the damage, while Egypt wouldn't be able to repeat this.
But yes, the planes would be expendable. That said, Egypt could very well breach the dam itself. It would needs some creative use of munitions but modern munitions are precise enough to allow for breaching of dams.
The real question is what Sudan would do (probably lie down for the Egyptians).
The reason is the topography. Ethiopia has lots of mountains, like Switzerland and it is painful to attack.
Any foreign nation helping Ethiopia could mean disaster for Egypt.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/egypt-sudan-hold-nile-e...
Go block oil extraction in the Arab world and USA will be all over you...national interest.
You mean like they did in the 70ies when the opec cartel cut oil production for political reasons? yeah...
That is irrelevant. Oil is fungible. Block oil exports from the Middle East and the price of oil skyrockets worldwide including in the US.
From 1975 to 2015 the US had a law banning most crude oil exports from the US (aside from Canada and partially Mexico), effectively creating a separate North America-only oil market. It wouldn't take much for the US to reinstate this ban, meaning oil produced in the US stays in the US. And since the US is a net oil exporter, that means North American oil prices will stay low and stable.