Syria stands between Egypt and
Iran By Adam Morrow and Khaled
Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO - The election of
the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi to the
presidency this summer was followed by a flurry of
conjecture that the restoration of
Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic relations - frozen
since 1979 - was in the offing. Yet despite some
initial indications to this effect, local analysts
now say such speculation appears to have been
premature.
"Egypt-Iran relations have
certainly warmed since Morsi's assumption of the
presidency," Mohammed Saeed Idris, expert in
Iranian affairs at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center
for Political and Strategic Studies, told IPS.
"But in light of certain factors, not least of
which is Egypt's recent declaration of support for
the opposition in Syria, the resumption of ties
now appears unlikely in the short term."
Over the last decade, Iran has repeatedly
expressed its desire to
restore ties with Egypt,
the Arab world's most populous country. "If the
Egyptian government was willing, we would open an
embassy in Cairo the same day," Iranian President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad famously declared in 2007.
Under the regime of ousted president Hosni
Mubarak, Egypt - taking its cue from Washington -
consistently rebuffed the Iranian overtures,
choosing instead to see the Islamic republic as a
"threat" to regional security. But following
Morsi's assumption of the presidency in June, many
analysts had predicted that the country's new
Islamist head of state would move quickly to
restore ties with Iran.
In hope of
sweetening the deal, meanwhile, Iranian officials
had stressed their readiness to pump significant
Iranian investment into Egypt's economy and work
on boosting bilateral trade if diplomatic
relations were restored.
Although formal
ties remain suspended until now, Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi recently expressed his
"optimism" regarding the future of Egypt-Iran
relations, stressing that they were "heading for
the better".
At a September 19 press
conference with his Egyptian, Turkish and Saudi
counterparts, he said that economic relations with
Egypt were "progressing well," pointing out that
the volume of bilateral trade had doubled in
recent months. "This is a sign that the future of
bilateral relations will be better," the Iranian
minister declared.
Morsi broke fresh
ground in late August when he visited Tehran - the
first Egyptian head of state to do so in more than
three decades - for a summit of the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM), where he formally handed over the
movement's rotating presidency to Iranian
counterpart Ahmadinejad.
In an
unprecedented show of warmth, Morsi referred to
Ahmedinejad as "my dear brother," and to Iran as
"the sister Islamic republic of Iran".
But
while Morsi's Tehran trip may have served to break
the ice, Idris says the visit "was mostly for
reasons of protocol; to formally pass the NAM
presidency from Egypt to Iran".
Idris, who
served as head of the Arab affairs committee in
Egypt's last (now-disbanded) parliament, went on
to explain that, despite Tehran's strong desire to
restore diplomatic ties, there were both "internal
and external obstacles" currently preventing Egypt
from doing so.
"Externally, such a move
would adversely impact Egypt's relations with the
Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, whose
animosity towards Iran is well known," said Idris.
"What's more, the Egyptian government is currently
negotiating a hefty loan package from the IMF,
which the US would likely block in the event that
Cairo restored relations with Tehran."
On
the domestic front, he added, the resumption of
ties with Iran "would alienate Egypt's nascent
Salafist parties, which oppose normalizing
relations with a Shi'ite power that they believe
wants to promote Shi'ite ideology in Sunni-Muslim
Egypt."
Egypt's Salafist parties,
established in the wake of the revolution early
last year and which espouse an ultraconservative
brand of Islam, won almost a quarter of the seats
in the People's Assembly (the lower house of
parliament) in Egypt's first post-Mubarak
legislative elections.
Yet perhaps the
most serious obstacle to the speedy restoration of
Egypt-Iran ties, say analysts, is Cairo's position
- articulated by Morsi on more than one occasion -
on the ongoing crisis in Syria.
While
speaking at the NAM summit in Tehran, Morsi no
doubt irked his Iranian hosts by coming out firmly
on the side of Syria's armed insurgency. Declaring
that the government of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad had "lost its legitimacy," he went so far
as to compare the Damascus regime with Israel's
perennial occupation of Palestine.
While
Morsi has repeatedly ruled out foreign military
involvement in Syria, he nevertheless went on to
assert that the crisis could only be resolved
through "effective intervention" from outside.
Tehran, which counts Syria as its only
regional ally in its ongoing confrontation with
the US-led Western powers, has continued to
support the Damascus regime against Syria's armed
- and increasingly violent - opposition.
"Tehran's continued support for al-Assad
has become the latest stumbling-block before
Egypt-Iran rapprochement," said Idris. "The
resumption of ties with Iran now appears to be
conditioned on the latter forsaking its support
for Damascus."
Only days before Morsi
spoke in Tehran, a spokesman for Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood - from which the Egyptian president
hails - stated: "The normalization of relations
with Iran is impossible as long as Iran continues
to support the Assad regime. Egypt cannot restore
ties with Iran at the expense of the Syrian people
and the security of the Gulf."
Diplomatic
ties between the two countries were first severed
in 1979, in the immediate wake of Iran's Islamic
Revolution, after former Egyptian president Anwar
Sadat signed the Camp David peace agreement with
Israel. Cairo further alienated the nascent
Islamic Republic later the same year by granting
political asylum to deposed shah of Iran Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi.
Relations became downright
hostile during the 1980s, when Egypt openly
supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq against
revolutionary Iran in the eight-year war of
attrition between the two countries. Today, Cairo
remains the only Arab capital not to have official
diplomatic relations with Tehran.
"The
formal restoration of ties cannot be ruled out in
the medium term," asserted Idris. "But in light of
ongoing regional developments, such a step by
Egypt is highly unlikely in the immediate future."
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