Egypt and Iran are inching towards restoring full diplomatic ties. A leap, however, is yet to be taken, reports Rasha Saad The Fourth Summit Meeting of Eight Developing Countries (D8) held in Tehran from 18-20 February was another chance for Egyptian and Iranian officials to reaffirm their commitment to rapprochement. Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi held talks on the fringes of the summit, with the two leading officials agreeing to work on restoring full diplomatic relations. Maher's visit to Tehran is seen in light of both countries' efforts to proceed with the "reconstruction" of their diplomatic ties, which have been almost non-existent since the 1979 Egyptian- Israeli peace treaty. "There was effectively an agreement in principle on restoring diplomatic relations with Iran to their normal level," Maher said after his meeting with Kharrazi. "What remains now are certain steps we hope will not take much time," he added. Maher has also met with President Mohamed Khatami and disclosed after the meeting that Khatami "is looking forward to conditions that will permit him to visit Egypt and deliver a sermon at Al-Azhar mosque". Putting his weight behind both countries' efforts for total rapprochement, Khatami said that "today our governments are taking strides in a way to get closer to each other and I am confident that ties between Iran and Egypt are in the interest of the two countries as well as the Islamic and Arab states," he added. Khatami did not deny the existence of "differences of political views between the two countries", but he stressed that the Iranian-Egyptian cultural connection had never been severed. "No two nations in the Islamic world are closer than the Iranian and Egyptian nations," the president said. Despite encouraging official statements and open courting from both sides, Iranian observers are bitter at the failure of President Hosni Mubarak to attend the D8 summit. Amin Sabooni, editor-in-chief of the Iran Daily, told Al- Ahram Weekly that "Mubarak's refusal to attend the D8 summit was a bit strange and not at all helpful." Sabooni added that Mubarak's decision "gave new ammunition to those moderates and hard-liners in Tehran who complain that we are giving too much to the Egyptians and getting little in return." The participation of a high-level Egyptian delegation at the summit and Mubarak's phone call to Khatami after the end of the summit to offer condolences over a tragic train accident in Iran that killed at least 315 people did not seem to impress Iranian critics. Iranian analyst Mohamed Sadeq Al- Husseini, secretary-general of the Iran- Arab Forum for Dialogue, told the Weekly that Mubarak's failure to attend the summit "was shocking and gave a negative signal regarding the possibility of re-establishing ties in the near future". Cairo has said that Mubarak's absence from the summit was in protest of Iran's failure to rename the street honouring Khaled El-Islambouli, the Egyptian who assassinated Mubarak's predecessor Anwar El-Sadat in 1981. Egypt had announced that the prerequisites to Mubarak's attendance were that the street be renamed and that a mural of El- Islambouli be removed. In January a decision was taken by Tehran's city council to rename the street "Al-Intifada", but the street signs have not been actually changed. Tehran and Cairo began their diplomatic courtship in June 2000 with a telephone conversation between Mubarak and Khatami, the first direct contact between the presidents of the two countries. The leaders later met in Geneva in December 2003, on the sidelines of a UN technology summit, prompting speculation that both countries would quickly resume full ties. Al-Husseini blamed the Egyptian side for impeding such a step and ruled out any Iranian culpability in the delay. Al- Husseini attributed the failure to restore full diplomatic ties to "misconceptions in the mind of the Egyptian policymakers who are still crippled by the psychological barriers and the superficial barrier of the name of the street and El-Islambouli's mural." Unsurprisingly, Egyptian officials believe that there is more behind the delay than just psychological barriers. Egypt has accused Iran of harbouring members of violent Islamist organisations who have been convicted in absentia in Egyptian courts during the past decades. Egyptians also allege that the Iranians are quick to make promises but rarely take them seriously. As an example, they cite the failure of the Iranians to actually change the name of the street. In a recent statement, Maher has also referred to the internal Iranian politics as a factor in the postponement the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cairo and Tehran. Iran has seen internal strife in the past months between its hard-line and reformist factions after the hard-line Guardian Council banned about 2,000 reformists from running for the 20 February parliamentary elections. With an overwhelming electoral victory for the hard-liners, the future of the Iranian-Egyptian relations was believed to be at stake. However the Iranians are signalling that the hard-liners may be willing to continue normalising relations. Sabooni described Maher's statement linking the new parliament to the future of bilateral ties as "untimely and uncalled for". Iranian analysts have been dismissing as marginal the effect of internal politics on relations with Egypt. They argue that the choice to resume relations with Egypt has already been made at the highest level in Iran, and will not be impacted by the parliamentary turnover. Fahmy Howeidy, a prominent Egyptian writer who is an expert in Iranian affairs, is even optimistic that such internal changes in Iran will speed up rather than delay rapprochement with Egypt. According to Howeidy both the hard- liners and reformists in Iran are in favour of restoring relations with Egypt. The dispute between them, he argues, is regarding who will claim the political victory of normalising ties. "The conservatives did not want this major move to be attributed to the reformists. They wanted to have that privilege." He added that the hard-liners have more say in changing the name of the street and removing the mural. Howeidy believes that simplifying the issue to categorise the reformists as the good guys and the hard-liners as the bad guys is misleading. He characterised many of the hard-liners as rational and pragmatic, or as Sabooni puts it, "well aware of the need for normalcy and cooperation in today's world of interdependence." Despite the complications, the restoration of full relations is a priority for both Egypt and Iran, according to Howeidy. With the looming presence of US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and some neighbouring Central Asian countries, and with Egypt fighting isolation in a divided Arab world, both countries are more serious than ever in their rapprochement moves. Underlining Egypt's commitment to normalise relations, Maher said, "Cooperation is the only way to confront common threats and to strengthen security, stability and economic development in the region."
