Iran
hopes for Egypt in new orbit By
Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Different players
are watching Egypt for very different reasons.
Arab youth see it as a brilliant success story,
and are striving to copy it in countries like
Bahrain, Yemen and Libya.
The United
States is obsessed with Egypt, worried about the
loss of president Hosni Mubarak, a traditional
American ally in the Arab world. Israel is very
worried - if not frantic - given the numerous
favors Mubarak had provided vis-a-vis the
Palestinians in Gaza and in upholding and
protecting the Camp David Accords of 1978.
Iran, however, and Hezbollah in Lebanon
are thrilled to see the end of Mubarak, a man who
aggressively challenged their
policies, often against
the will of his own people, and all were quick in
celebrating his thundering collapse on February
11.
Mubarak to Iran is what Cuban leader
Fidel Castro was to the United States - a
long-standing and aging opponent who did not leave
behind a single good deed for which to be
remembered. With him gone, they are hoping that
Egypt will shift into a new orbit, next to
countries like Syria and Turkey, relieved that for
the next six months at least until possible
elections, there will be no Mubarak to meddle in
the affairs of Lebanon or those of Hamas in the
Gaza Strip.
At one point, when both
countries were governed by pro-Western monarchies,
relations had been very warm between Tehran and
Cairo, resulting in a brief 1939 marriage between
the sister of the king of Egypt and the Shah of
Iran.
In the 1950s, however, then-Egyptian
president Gamal Abdul Nasser accused the shah of
being an agent of "American imperialism" while the
shah blasted him as a "puppet of the Soviet
Union". Nasser threatened to conquer Iran's
Khuzestan province - which he called Arabistan -
and popularized the term "Arab Gulf" instead of
"Persian Gulf".
Relations improved,
however, in terms of bilateral trade and political
coordination under Anwar Sadat, only to come to an
abrupt end after the Iranian revolution of 1979.
The Iranians were furious with Sadat, who hosted
the toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi, severing relations
with Cairo in 1980. They named a street in honor
of Sadat’s assassin in Tehran in 1981.
All
of that history combined to weigh heavily over the
past 10 years on Egyptian-Iranian relations,
explaining why the Iranians are thrilled to see
the end of Mubarak, who carried nothing but
contempt for the Iranians until curtain fall.
All Iranian attempts at improving
relations with Mubarak drastically failed, notably
the 2003 high-profile meeting between him and
then-Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The
Iranian leader invited Mubarak to Tehran but the
Egyptians said that they would not make the trip
and normalize relations with Iran until all public
tributes to Sadat’s assassin were "erased".
To please the Egyptians, Iran even changed
the name of Khaled Islambouli Street, renaming it
after the uprising that erupted in Palestine in
2000, Intifada Street. In 2007, senior Iranian
leader Ali Larijani visited Cairo, meeting with
foreign minister Ahmad Abu al-Gheit, ex-vice
president and former intelligence chief Omar
Suleiman and Mohammad Said Tintawi, the grand
sheikh of al-Azhar, the highest authority in the
Muslim Sunni community.
In January 2008, a
groundbreaking meeting took place between Mubarak
and Gholam Ali Hada, the then-speaker of the
Iranian parliament. This was followed by a phone
call between Mubarak and Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad and a meeting between the Egyptian
president and Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr
Mottaki. Mubarak called bilateral relations
"positive and appropriate", while Mottaki said
Egypt supported Iran's right to develop peaceful
nuclear technology.
A breakthrough,
however, never really saw the light, given Egypt’s
hostile position towards Hamas and Hezbollah,
which it saw as Iranian proxies in the Arab world.
One of the driving reasons behind Mubarak’s very
aggressive attitude towards Hamas, for example,
during the 2008 war on Gaza was because he simply
could not see the conflict through the broader
Arab-Israeli conflict. As far as he was
concerned, given Iran’s alliance with Hamas, if
the Palestinian group was not crushed, he would
eventually have Egyptian borders not with Gaza,
but with the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is why
he struck with an iron fist, sealing the Rafah
crossing into Gaza, preventing pro-Hamas
demonstrations in Egypt, and urging Israel -
behind closed doors - to continue in its war,
hoping that they could crush the Islamic
resistance in Palestine.
In 2006, during
the Israeli war on Lebanon, Mubarak argued that
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah was an adventurer
who had done Lebanon a great disservice by going
to war against Israel - words that echoed what had
been said in Riyadh. Mubarak sent shockwaves
throughout Iran when he appeared on al-Arabiyya TV
in 2006 and said that Shi'ites of the Arab world
were more loyal to Iran than they were to their
own countries, echoing what King Abdullah of
Jordan had earlier described as a "Shi'ite
crescent".
In 2008, Nasrallah came close
to calling for a popular uprising against Mubarak,
and a revolt in the Egyptian army, given that he
had repeatedly refused to open the Rafah crossing.
Mubarak responded by arresting Hezbollah members
in Egypt, accused of illegally transporting arms
to the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Iranians
needless to say were furious. They were equally
very angry with Mubarak’s strong backing for
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas' pro-Western
Fatah movement and his blind support for Lebanon’s
ex-prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who since 2005
has aggressively tried challenging Hezbollah’s
power in Lebanon.
By the time the Egyptian
revolt broke out in January, all room for dialogue
between Mubarak and the Iranians had come to a
grinding halt. They are now closely watching who
will come next to the Presidential Palace in Cairo
next September.
The Iranians have no
illusions; they realize that even if he so wishes,
the next president of Egypt cannot back out on
Camp David, even if he wished. That after all
would put him on a collision course with the US.
Although uncertain what kind of leader he will be,
what is certain is that the next president will be
a complete contradiction to Mubarak.
Mubarak, for example, was in his early 80s
while the new president will be much younger -
hopefully in his 40s. Mubarak was a dictator while
the new president will certainly be elected to
office through a parliamentary democracy and not
stay in power for more than two terms.
The
ex-president was hostile to Hamas and Hezbollah
and was radically pro-American and pro-Israeli.
The new president will probably be way less
pro-American or pro-Israeli than his predecessor,
which makes him by default, closer to resistance
groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief
of Forward Magazine in Syria.
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