Egypt's decision to try an Iranian diplomat for spying brought normalisation efforts between both countries back to square one. Rasha Saad reports Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed said last Tuesday that Cairo would try Mohamed Reza Doust, a former Iranian diplomat in Cairo, on charges of spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and plotting to carry out assassinations in Egypt. For Egyptians and Iranians -- who have been anticipating the resumption of full bilateral relations after officials of both countries engaged in several diplomatic courtship exercises over the course of the last year -- the news came as a shocking surprise. Abdel-Wahed said that Doust, who served in the Iranian interests section in Cairo, but left Egypt about a year ago for another post, would be tried in absentia. Doust will be tried along with 31-year-old Egyptian Mahmoud Dabbous who has allegedly been providing Doust with information. According to Abdel-Wahed, both Dabbous and Doust plotted a range of attacks "with the aim of harming the state's national interests and severing political relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia". Dabbous, who worked in Saudi Arabia, was also said to have supplied information to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that helped carry out the attack on a petrochemical site in the Saudi city of Yanbu. Following his arrest, Dabbous has reportedly admitted that he had received $50,000 in cash from Iran's Revolutionary Guards to kill unnamed targets in Egypt and of spying for the Islamic Republic, charges that carry a possible 25-year prison term. The news was shocking primarily because for the last year speculation was rife that an agreement to restore full diplomatic relations was at hand. Both countries have been giving positive signals since President Hosni Mubarak and Iranian President Mohamed Khatami met -- for the first time since 1979 -- last December on the fringes of a UN summit in Geneva. Despite acknowledging the existence of some differences, official statements from both sides were always encouraging. After meeting with his counterpart in Tehran on the fringes of the D8 summit in February, former foreign minister Ahmed Maher said that there was effectively an agreement in principle on restoring diplomatic relations with Iran to their normal level, and that "what remains now are certain steps we hope will not take much time." Similar statements were echoed by Iranian officials, who were even more open in indicating that the important steps had been completed and that both sides were in the process of seeing how to sort out the questions of protocol. In January Tehran's city council agreed to change the name of a street named after Khaled Al-Islambouli, one of the assassins of late Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat, removing one of the major sticking points which was a condition for Cairo to resume normal relations. Egyptian analyst Fahmy Howeidy believes that the news of the arrest is "false propaganda, exaggerated by our media to distract attention from the release of the Israeli spy Azzam Azzam". Howeidy believes that insisting that the alleged Iranian spy was linked to the hardline Revolutionary Guards and was not in any way linked to or acknowledged by the political leadership of the reformists headed by President Mohamed Khatami is proof that the news is meant to achieve a certain political goal without torpedoeing Egypt's relationship with the Islamic Republic. Indeed diplomatic sources believe that Egypt is convinced that it will still take some time before both countries can attain full normalisation because of the lack of political will on the part of both regimes, and that keeping the present level of bilateral relations is the only achievement near at hand. Accordingly, Cairo was encouraged to make a revelation on the spy issue, knowing it has nothing to lose. Relations between the two countries were severed in 1980, a year after Egypt signed the US-brokered Camp David peace accords with Israel. However, trade and other ties have been improving since the 1990s. Both countries have also established friendship groups that include Egyptian and Iranian intellectuals, parliamentarians and members of NGOs. In addition last January, Iran participated in the Cairo International Book Fair for the first time. Back in Tehran, however, Iranians are sceptical of the sources of the latest news, doubting that they are purely Egyptian and pointing to other external elements -- mainly Israel -- as responsible for leading Egypt to make such a revelation. Echoing this view, Foreign Minister Hamid Reza Asefi denied Cairo's charges and described them as "baseless". "This scenario has been prepared under the influence of Iran's enemies," Asefi said. According to the Iranian view, the news from Egypt coincides with what seems to them an organised campaign against the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the arrest of Dabbous was timed to coincide with news of Israel's arrest of Mohamed Said Ghanem, an Arab-Israeli from the West Bank city of Baqa, also on charges of working for Iranian intelligence. It also coincided with statements by Jordanian King Abdullah warning that Iran is trying to influence the Iraqi elections to create an Islamic government that would dramatically shift the geopolitical balance between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the Middle East. The king also charged that some Iranians have been trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and are members of militias that could fuel trouble in Iraq. Iranians believe that the main goal of the spy issue is to damage relations between both countries and prevent possible coordination between the two regional heavyweights concerning issues such as Iraq. Iranian analyst Mohamed Sadeq Al-Husseini, secretary-general of the Iran-Arab Forum for Dialogue, found the news startling and wondered why Egypt would have sat on the case for a whole year. Al-Husseini also added that the Egyptian Interior Minister Habib El-Adli had met his Iranian counterpart in Tehran on the fringes of the conference of Iraqi neighbouring countries just a couple of weeks ago and "the matter was never brought up." Al-Husseini also refuted claims that Iranian hardliners are to be blamed for attempting to hinder the resumption of full diplomatic ties with Egypt and are still wedded to the notion of exporting Islamic Revolution to other countries, including Egypt. "There is a consensus among all Iranians, including hardliners, that the notion of exporting Islamic Revolution is worn out." Al-Husseini also believes the hardliners are particularly convinced of the importance of resuming ties with Egypt, citing the vote by Tehran city council, which has a majority of hardliners, to change the name of the Al- Islambouli street. However Mahmoud Farag, a former Egyptian diplomat and an expert in Iranian affairs, argues that there is a split and consequent clash within the political leadership in Iran, with the hardliners led by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the one side, and reformers led by President Khatami on the other side. Farag would not therefore rule out the authenticity of Cairo's charges that Doust served as an intelligence agent to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who usually work in isolation from the political leadership. However, Farag does agree that the timing of the revelation seems politically motivated. "One cannot rule out that the incident is based on judicial sources revealing details and names and on a confession from the Egyptian suspect. It is up to Egyptian authorities, however, to choose the timing which best serves its political goals."
