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April 22, 2011
Possible thaw after 30 years
Israelis watch as Egypt and Iran hint at a possible rapprochement.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
All it takes is the change of a street name in Tehran and the toppling of the Egyptian president to put Tehran and Cairo on the path of rapprochement. But analysts say they believe that the warm words now emanating from the two capitals won’t be enough to overcome fundamentally different national interests.
Egypt wants to “open a new page” with Iran, in the words of freshly installed Foreign Minister Nabil Al-Arabi. His only condition is that Iran change the name of a street in Tehran named after Lt. Khalid Istanbuli, who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at a military parade in Cairo in 1981.
“Mubarak had a visceral hatred for Iran, which was reflected in Egypt’s foreign policy,” said David Schenker, an Egypt analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (“The new government of Egypt’s bona fides rest, at least in part, on making a break from [Hosni] Mubarak-era policies.”)
Reconciliation between the two countries, both contenders for the leading power in the Middle East, would undermine a key tenet of American policy. Washington has been counting on Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, to act as a local counterbalance to Tehran’s growing ambitions in the Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon and other parts of the Arab world.
The bad blood between the two countries goes back to 1979, when Egypt offered asylum to Iran’s deposed ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and signed a peace treaty with Iran’s archenemy, Israel.
The two continue to bump up against one another. Iran’s strategic backing of the Shiites of Iraq and Lebanon, as well as its alliance with the Alawite-ruled Syria, has undermined Egypt’s position as the leading Arab power. Tehran supports Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran’s rulers routinely rapped Egyptian president Mubarak’s alliance with Washington and peace with Israel to delegitimize him in the Islamic world, but Mubarak stepped down in February, removing a major obstacle to resuming ties and, since then, Cairo has been sending positive signals to its longtime foe.
Last month, Egypt allowed two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time in 30 years. Early in April, Al-Arabi said his country was interested in “opening a new page with all countries, including Iran,” which he termed “not an enemy state.” “The Egyptian and Iranian people deserve to have mutual relations reflecting their history and civilization,” Reuters quoted the foreign minster as saying.
A day later, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi welcomed the Egyptian overture and said he hoped to witness an “expansion of ties” between the two countries. Iranian lawmakers announced that they had been invited to the Egyptian parliament to help establish an Iran-Egypt parliamentary friendship group, Iran’s Press TV reported. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he looked forward to improved relations.
“Iran has been seeking the expansion of ties with all governments and nations except the Zionist regime [Israel]. I have also announced earlier that we are looking to expand ties, particularly with Egypt, and hope for moving developments on this issue,” Ahmadinejad said at a press conference, urging Egypt not to place conditions on the steps. That left it unclear whether the name of Khaled Istanbuli Avenue would be changed any time soon.
Newly freed from the political bindings of the previous era, the extraordinary changes in Cairo appear to have put Egyptian foreign policy on a new course that the leadership of its transitional government hopes will enable Egypt to regain its prominence as the leader of the Arab world and be at peace with its neighbors.
“The new Egypt really doesn’t want to have any problems with anybody in the region and is working to improve ties with Iran and with Syria,” said Abdel Monem Said, president of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. “There’s also the school of thought that adheres to the saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your adversaries closer.’”
Mehrdad Kohnsari, an independent scholar and secretary-general of the Green Wave, an Iranian opposition movement based in Britain, said that restoring ties with Egypt would bring propaganda benefits to Tehran by showing that the Arab Spring of revolutions spreading across the Middle East was working in Iran’s favor and creating new friends.
“But that doesn’t mean things are going to be hunky-dory, or that Iran won’t have problems with Egypt…. Far from it, the basic tenets of Egyptian society and what governs it hasn’t changed,” Kohnsari explained. “If the army continues to play a key role, or someone like Amr Moussa becomes president in the next elections, tensions will never subside, so long as the Iranian government meddles in the affairs of Arab countries, especially in the Gulf.”
The prospect of warming ties is already alarming the Gulf Arab states, which have sought clarifications from Egypt. Saudi Arabia is convinced that Iran is meddling in the region and pushed the marginalized Shiite majority to challenge the Sunni monarchy Bahrain.
Said suggested that the Iranian motivation for resuming ties with Cairo is an attempt to drive a wedge between Egypt and the Gulf states and chalk up a symbolic victory by befriending a major U.S. regional ally.
Schenker echoed this view, saying improving relations with Cairo would provide Tehran “an opportunity to stick a finger in Washington’s eye.” But, he said, the army isn’t enamored of Tehran and certainly not of its Islamic revolution. “The military still views Iran with great suspicion and concern,” Schenker continued. “This development offers little tangible benefit to Cairo.”
The Egyptian public also doesn’t seem ready for a revolution in foreign policy. A poll conducted by the International Peace Institute last month found that 36 percent of Egyptians opposed Iran and its nuclear weapons program and that 60 percent favored keeping Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. It also found no wide support for Muslim parties of the kind friendly to Iran. The secular Wafd Party was the most popular political group in the country; the Muslim Brotherhood ranked second.
Kohnsari, a former Iranian diplomat, dismissed Tehran’s propaganda that the Arab Spring is a continuation of the 1979 Islamic revolution. “Nowhere in Tunisia or Egypt is anything being said about ‘Allahu akhbar’ [God is great],” he said, referring to the battle cry of Islamists. “What has inspired people in the Middle East in the last several months has been the resistance of the Iranian people 20 months ago, not the Islamic revolution of 32 years ago.”
Schenker said that whoever assumes leadership in Egypt will likely adopt “anti-Mubarak” positions and distance the country from Washington, but that didn’t necessarily mean Cairo and Tehran will become the best of friends. “Iran is a regional rival of Egypt, and has been an agent of subversion,” he said. “While the optics and the bilateral dynamic will change, the national interests of the two states will continue to clash, limiting development of the bilateral ties.”
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