Alwaght- Though Iran-Egypt relations have been cut off for four decades, in recent months, rays of hope for a détente began to beam. After Iranian-Saudi agreement, other Arab states have begun to follow a similar path and expressed interest to improve relations with the Islamic Republic. Egypt is one of the region’s influential countries that is working more to mend ties with Tehran and several months after announcing its readiness to rebuilt ties to Iran, it has started the arrangements.
The Egyptian Minister of Tourism Ahmad Issa on Monday said that Cairo will provide new facilitation to attract tourists to the country. He said that his country will take measures for Iranians and nationals of other countries to get tourist visas. He maintained that Iranian citizens can enter Egypt only through tourism companies and currently they can only travel to South Sinai.
Egypt’s new position demonstrates that its leaders have now come to believe that not only the US policy to isolate Iran regionally has gone nowhere, but also the Islamic Republic plays a greater role in regional and international developments, as the efforts over last years to create an Arab-Israeli coalition against Iran have failed. Abdullah al-Ashal, the former deputy foreign minister of Egypt, stated that it is not good to continue diplomatic hiatus between Egypt and Iran. He further said that Cairo’s strategic interests lied in restoration of these relations, which will benefit both countries, especially the Egyptian side. According to this former Egyptian official, re-engagement with Tehran may make it easier for Cairo to play a positive role in regional crises in which Iran plays a good role.
Beginning normalization arrangements
Although the Egyptian moves to get closer to Iran increased after Iran-Saudi Arabia détente, the arrangements had already begun. One diplomatic contact was the short chat of the Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt on the sidelines of Baghdad Summit in September 2021. Iran’s FM talked to the Egyptian president about the situation of several Iranians sentenced to death in Egypt on drugs smuggling charges, according to people familiar with the conversation.
Also, Ali Selajgeh, the head of Iran’s Department of Environment, who traveled to Sharm El-Sheikh on November to participate in the climate change meeting, met and talked with Egyptian officials, including Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri. Iran’s President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi sent a message el-Sisi at that time expressing interest to improve relations with Egypt. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said in July last year that Iran had proposed establishing communication channels with Egypt and claimed that separate talks had started in Baghdad between Egypt and Iran.
Egypt’s plan to issue visas to Iranian tourists comes as when last summer Iranian-Israeli tensions escalated, Tel Aviv accused Iran of planning attacks on Israeli citizens in Egypt and Turkey and asked Cairo to take anti-Iranian stances. But with a progress in cultural relations, Egyptian officials are expected to be inattentive of Israeli claims and deem partnership with Iran as in their interests. Also, recently a retired Egyptian general said that if Israel attacked Iran, Arab world will back Tehran with all power.
As two bastions of civilization in the region, Iran and Egypt have many cooperation and synergy potentials in order to secure bilateral and regional interests and protect security and stability in West Asia and North Africa, and if their diplomatic relations resume, cooperation at other levels will increase effectively and help solve regional crises. Like other Arab countries, the Egyptian leaders have felt the beginning of the process of the downfall of the American international hegemony and the withdrawal of this country from West Asian, and this means establishing the position and role of Iran as an influential regional power in the future security order. Egypt, observing the tendency of the Persian Gulf countries to improve relations with Tehran, tries to balance its relations with Iran and the Arab countries of the region in order to adapt to the new conditions and, thus, expand its regional influence. After decades, the Egyptians are seeking to restore relations with traditional allies in West Asia such as Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, and the New Levant initiative is Cairo’s initiative to advance a new alliance with these countries as Tehran has taken in past decades its place in regional alliances with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine (Gaza). Therefore, the Egyptians consider it impossible to ignore Iran’s role.
From another aspect, the Egyptian government, which has been in tensions with the Israelis in recent months, is pushing to pressurize Tel Aviv through cozying up to Tehran and force it away from its controversial plans against the Palestinians. After Tehran-Riyadh agreement, an Iranian-Egyptian détente is not unlikely should the two sides eliminate the obstacles, including the past distrust.
Cooperation to settle regional crises
Although Egypt has no diplomatic relations with Iran, in regional cases where Iran was a party to, it was acting more conservatively to avoid serious confrontation with Tehran. For example, in the Yemen war, although Egypt supported the Saudi coalition ostensibly, it did not take any action to help the Saudis on the ground, and after a year, it withdrew from this coalition. Egypt experienced a bitter defeat in the 1960 war in Yemen and at that time lost at least 10,000 troops, and this time it did not consider Yemen campaign serving its interests because it did not believe in the victory of the Saudi coalition. So, it separated ways from the allies to avoid humiliation of a new defeat. On the other hand, Egypt, which had good relations with the South Yemeni government in the past, tried to avoid tarnishing its image among the southern Yemeni tribes by staying away from the Saudi-waged war.
A major part of Egypt’s trade is via the Red Sea and it was important for it to protect the security of navigation especially in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Actually, peace and stability in Yemen were more beneficial to the Egyptians than war, and it was for this reason that instead of joining the battle, they preferred to mediate. One term of the last year Saudi-Yemen ceasefire was transfer of the injured Yemenis to Egypt for treatment, something confirming that Cairo sought peace not war.
Since the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia will be effective in ending the crisis in Yemen, the Egyptians have firmly supported it. Egypt’s foreign ministry announced that the country followed with interest the agreement to resume diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran to help ease regional tensions. Egypt’s unwillingness to escalate tensions with Iran in the region can be seen in the country’s stance towards American policies. Last year, when the Americans pushed for an Arab-Israeli coalition against Iran, Egyptian response was negative.
One of the reasons Cairo is interested to work with Iran is Syrian crisis. Along with the Arab countries, Egypt severed its relations with the Syrian government in 2011, and during the short-lived presidency of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi, Cairo supported armed groups fighting Damascus, but after the removal of Morsi from power and the inauguration of el-Sisi, Egypt’s position softened. Egypt, which has been struggling with terrorism in the Sinai desert for many years, did not support Syria terrorists, finding their entrenchment in Syria posing national security threats. Egypt relatively supported President Bashar al-Assad and opposed use of military force to overthrow him.
Since 2020, Egypt publicized its interest in a rapprochement with Syria, and after last month devastating earthquake that hit northern Syria, el-Sisi talked over the phone with al-Assad for the first time since the start of Syrian conflict. El-Sisi even expressed his interest to meet al-Assad and in a message to him, he said that he was proud of the historical relations with Syria. Egypt is one of the countries that is trying to bring Syria back to the Arab League, and given Saudi recent expression of interest to reopen embassy in Damascus, very likely Syria will return to the Arab bloc soon.
With Iran being the biggest Syrian government’s regional backer, Cairo knows that any normalization with Damascus crosses Tehran. Therefore, it pushes for a détente with Tehran to put an end to regional crises in association with each other.
Given the resolution of President Raisi’s administration to mend ties with regional countries and also the diplomatic progress deriving from Iranian-Saudi agreement, Tehran-Egypt relations are expected to be unlocked after four decades, something crucial to de-escalation and settlement of regional crises.
