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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Laying the demons to rest
By Azadeh MoaveniA less hard-line foreign policy has been one of the key objectives of Mohamed Khatami's tenure as president. Within the region, the highest hopes for rapprochement have been directed toward Cairo. Long advocated by policy-makers, but never a state priority, the Khatami government's increasing openness toward normalising ties with Egypt is taking on more tangible dimensions.
Trade fairs, friendship societies, a soccer match and now a historic telephone chat between Khatami and President Hosni Mubarak are the symbolic gestures that, on the Iranian side, are underlined by a serious commitment to building a new relationship. Rehabilitated ties with Egypt, the Iranian government believes, are fundamental to a new regional role for Iran and the final shedding of decades of stubborn, damaging isolationism.
Sorting out the sovereignty question with the United Arab Emirates over three Gulf islands may seem a trickier diplomatic feat, but renewed ties with Egypt actually involve smoothing over much rougher edges. Though pragmatism, more than ideology, now flavours Iranian foreign policy, dealing with Egypt means either exorcising ideological demons or finally consenting to relegate them to the background. The obstacles that remain may be largely symbolic -- a street name or the political language used for the Shah or Israel -- but, for Iran, how the two countries deal with Israel will be a delicate question.
Defining Israel in the re-establishment papers, says Mahmoud Sariolghalam, a professor at Beheshti University who follows Egypt-Iran relations, "must be done in a way that would not jeopardise Egyptian-Israeli relations, but also satisfy domestic political groups in Iran."
Reformists hope that Khatami will distance himself, as well as Iranian foreign policy, from the Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian groups for pragmatic considerations. The argument is that these resistance movements are one thing, while their financial backing and political dependence, obstructing other key alliances as they do, are another.
While tacit support, mainly in policy-making circles, for normalisation with Egypt has existed for several years, a broad consensus has only emerged following Khatami's election. In Iran, it is not only the Foreign Ministry that is in charge of foreign policy files but, according to Sariolghalam, there is a consensus on the need for good relations with Cairo in all institutions that deal with foreign policy. Iranian hard-liners, long-time opponents of any ties with Egypt, have slowly warmed up to the idea, though any rapid or sudden moves may provoke the predictable rhetoric of "American stooge" or "Zionist friend" that has been aimed at both Egypt and some other Arab countries in the last two decades.
Other developments in the region have influenced this shift in the Iranian perspective. The Turkish-Israeli alliance and the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement have made ties with Egypt more urgent, and not quite unprecedented.
"Five years ago, you had to be careful about wording, but now you can largely say what you want about how quickly to move toward a reconciliation," says Sariolghalam.
The shift in no small part is due to a recognition that Egypt, too, now looks at Iran differently. "When all the news coming out of Cairo was about Iran infecting the region with the Islamist threat," says a Tehran journalist close to the reform movement, "naturally it was much harder to make a case for re-establishing ties."
Reformists in the new parliament have foreign policy on their agenda, and say they plan to actively take initiatives that will pave the way for closer governmental ties. The former head of the Iranian-Egyptian Friendship Society was a key reformist editor and, as progressive-minded religious intellectuals, reformists are keenly interested in observing first-hand a model, however flawed, of a representative government in an Islamic society.
Iranians recognise in Egypt the cultural superiority they attribute to their own old civilisation. If tourism, flights, and increasingly high-level official exchanges cannot do it, then political pragmatism and national conceit may, in the not so distant future, bring the one-time allies closer to each other again. In Tehran, a long-standing inclination has already taken the form of a practical intention.
