Foreign Policy Differences

Dissimilar policies adopted by Egypt and Iran towards regional issues of significance further tore the two countries apart. Two examples are important in this regard: their position towards the security arrangements in the Persian Gulf and the Arab-Israeli peace process.

a- Persian Gulf Security and the Dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates

On the eve of the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in December 1971, the Shah occupied the islands of Abu Musa, Small and Greater Tunb, claimed to be part of the United Arab Emirates. The expansionist move was part of the Shah’s regional ambitions, in particular the role of the region’s ‘policeman’ he always envisaged for his country as well as his aspirations to transform Iran into a global power; the ‘fifth greatest power on earth’. Needless to say, all Arab countries (including Egypt) fully supported the UAE during the diplomatic warfare that followed the seizure of the islands. The incident poisoned Arab- Iranian relations and Egyptian-Iranian relations, many analysts argued.

Egypt enjoys strong economic relations with the littoral states of the Gulf. The presence of millions of workers whose remittances support the suffering Egyptian economy linked the region to Egypt’s economy and made its stability “an Egyptian national security interest”68. In the years from 1974 to 1984, some $33 billion were transferred to Egypt by its working force in the Gulf region, a major contribution in view of Egypt’s growing economic crisis and its acute need of hard currency69. Not only that, but Egypt’s tourism sector receives every year a large number of Arab tourists, who usually stay longer and spend more than their European and American counterparts. In 1982, for example, 613,000 Arab tourists visited Egypt, around 43.41% of the total number of tourists. The number jumped by 1992 to 1.1 million, around 34% of tourists received that year70. Obviously, destabilizing the breeding ground of much-needed income could not in any way be tolerated by the Egyptian leadership71.

Strategically, Egypt - a major Middle East player and a serious contender for regional leadership - has opposed Iran’s hegemony in the Gulf as its imperial role has threatened Egypt’s influence in the oil (and conflict)-rich area. This is exactly where the issue of the islands fit, for the occupation of the islands embodies Iran’s leadership designs, its expansionist intentions and its perceptions of the nature and extent of the role it shall play in the Persian Gulf. Hence, the islands issue transcends its own peculiarities and reflects a wider and more significant question, which is the security of the Persian Gulf and the different arrangements proposed for the maintenance of its security and stability. Iran, for example, has vehemently opposed any kind of foreign presence in the area, including that of Arab non-Gulf states. The formula of the Damascus Declaration (6+2) signed in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion trauma by the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE) as well as Egypt and Syria was rejected by Iran, not only because the arrangement pointlessly excluded Iran from the plan72, but also because it allowed out-of-area states an undesired military foothold in her backyard.

The aforementioned differences on the issue of Gulf security were seen by many analysts as a potential reason behind the non-stop tension in Egyptian-Iranian relations73. The rationale, however, is not valid for a number of reasons. Since Rafsanjani, Iran has kept cordial relations with Saudi Arabia, its chief adversary and the major contestant for leadership in the region. The Saudis - just like Egypt - clashed with revolutionary Iran in the 1980s on

various fronts (e.g. war with Iraq, pilgrimage confrontations in Mecca and on the ‘export of revolution’ issue), differed on the way security in the Gulf should be maintained and, moreover, allowed Americans to establish military bases on their soil. Had the divergence on Gulf policy and the occupied islands been the real reason behind the rupture in Egyptian- Iranian relations, one would expect it to seriously affect Saudi-Iranian relations in the first place because of the centrality of the issue to Saudi interests and the status of Saudi Arabia among the members of the GCC. But none of that had been witnessed in Saudi-Iranian encounters. In fact, Saudi-Iranian relations were resumed back in April 1991, during a visit made by President Rafsanjani to Riyadh. Likewise, Iran keeps friendly political relations and formidable economic ties with the rest of its Arab neighbors, despite the bitter heritage of the Iran-Iraq war, when all Gulf countries aided Saddam Hussein in his ‘sacred’ war against Iran, something that had, as a matter of fact, “left a deep scar on the national psyche of the Iranians”74. Recently, Iran requested an ‘observer’ seat in the Arab League, a clear indication of its interest in improving ties with the Arab world. According to Iranian MP, Seyyed Mahmoud Alavi:

“We have made rapprochement with Iraq, although we lost many of our youth during the eight-year war. We have also renewed ties with Saudi Arabia despite the martyrdom of our Hajj pilgrims in 1995. So, what is wrong with doing the same thing in regard to Egypt?”75

The fact that this issue is of vital importance to one party and of less significance to the other (by virtue of geographical location and level of involvement) further explains why it should not disrupt the course of bilateral relations. Egypt has been militarily absent in the Gulf (with the exception of the 1991 Gulf War) and politically marginal. Egypt has frequently shown signs of acquiesce to the predominance of Saudi Arabia among its Gulf sisters. Hence, the involvement of Cairo in major Gulf issues has more or less gone through the gateway of Riyadh. Moreover, an understanding of the vitality of the issue to Iranian interests was developed. As such, a clash over the initially different views could not possibly be responsible for the friction in bilateral relations.

More importantly, Iran’s relations with the UAE itself did not experience the kind of hostility and tension Egyptian-Iranian relations has witnessed over the past two decades. Both countries exchanged ambassadors following the positive gestures President Khatami made after his rise to power. When it comes to business and trade with the Arab world, the UAE

appears by large as the major Arab partner to Iran. In 2001, for example, Iranian-Emirates trade amounted to around $3 billion, or 87.3% of total commercial dealings with all Arab countries76. Giving more credit thus to this factor is a mere irony.

Surprisingly, it was Egypt that drove the UAE sometimes to take tougher stances towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. During a visit to Cairo in the mid-1990s, the President of the UAE Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan was induced by the Egyptian leadership to give anti-Iran announcements. The next stop in Nahyan’s tour was Syria, where President Hafez Assad and Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam rebuked him for giving in to Egyptian demands.

Additionally, Egypt’s relations with Israel were maintained in spite of the latter’s continued occupation of Arab lands, in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Though strained at times, especially during exploding moments, frequently witnessed on the Palestinian-Israeli front, relations were never cut since their inception in 1979. Similarly, Egypt’s relations with Turkey and Spain - who have border disputes with Syria and Morocco respectively - were not negatively affected whatsoever as a result of such problems. Also, the occupation of the islands did not stop Sadat from aligning with the Shah in the second half of the 1970s.

It is fair, therefore, to conclude that Egypt’s Gulf policy and the Iran-UAE dispute are “not a real stumbling block for Egyptian-Iranian relations”77.

b- Arab-Israeli Peace Process

The perceptions and attitudes of Iranian and Egyptian policy-makers towards the Middle East peace process that started in Madrid 1991 and was since then pursued by Arab parties are not identical78, both theoretically and practically79. Egypt, on one hand, is the main protagonist of the process. In fact, Egypt, by breaking the Arab boycott of Israel in the late 1970s and conducting direct peace negotiations with Israel, was a pioneer in this regard. Ever since then, Egypt has tried to convince the Arab warriors to put their weapons aside and place their bids on the negotiating table.

Iran, on the other hand, embraces the option of resistance. It considers the act of negotiations to be slippery and futile. When the Madrid Conference was convened in November 1991, Iran broke the Arab consensus by organizing a conference for the support of the Palestinian people. Practically, Iran supports the activities of Hizbullah in Southern

Lebanon and keeps cordial relations with Islamic Palestinian factions (Hamas and Al-Jihad Al-Islami). The success of its Lebanese allies in forcing the Israelis to withdraw their troops from South Lebanon in 2000 and the stalemate the peace process has gone through since the rise of Ariel Sharon to power (2001) convinced Iranians that the strategy of defiance and military confrontation is productive and that any kind of political dialogue with the “enemy” yields no substantive results.

Accordingly, some analysts argued that the Middle East peace process “is the main

obstacle to a resumption of Iranian-Egyptian relations”80 (emphasis added). This is not

accurate though. Certainly, the opposing approaches had a negative bearing on bilateral relations; especially from Egypt’s side since it considers the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a vital issue to its national security and hence continuously seeks solutions to terminate the decades- long conflict. After the last fortresses of Arab rejection (Syria and Libya) have fallen to the tide of peaceful coexistence, Egypt’s quest for moderation and compromise was only threatened by Iran’s hawkish response to the peace process.

But that in itself does not explain the continued state of tension between Egypt and Iran, for countries with different agendas and policies still keep political affairs unbroken. Agreement on all issues is virtually impossible, even among nations that share lots of commonalities, such as European states whose homogeneity did not inhibit them from differing on so many issues ranging from environmental policies and trade agreements to war on Iraq and combating international terrorism. The norm remains that states keep political relations intact, even if they happen to differ on some issues.

Second, Iran’s relations with Syria did not experience any setbacks as a result of the latter’s participation in the Madrid Conference and the subsequent multilateral Arab-Israeli negotiation tracks. The same thing could be said about Iran’s relations with Jordan, another Arab country who signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Likewise, “neither Iran nor the Gulf states have made this issue [the different attitude towards Israel] a public bone of contention between them”81. Political analyst Mohamed Idris wondered how Egypt’s peace with Israel could be seen as a reason for the stagnation in Egyptian-Iranian relations:

“Some say it is the Camp David Accords. The Important question here is: does Iran oppose the signing of a peace treaty between an Arab state and Israel? Is the signing of such treaties a sufficient reason for inhibiting the development of relations with Egypt? If that was

the case, then why did Iran accept developing its relations with Jordan?...And if that was the case, then how does Iran deal with the Palestinian National Authority that signed the Oslo Agreement with the Jewish state and that seeks negotiating according to the ‘Road Map’? And if that was the case, then what is the Iranian position on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s call for resuming negotiations with Israel from where it stopped?”82

In addition, Iran has over time changed its stubborn stance towards the peace process and, thus, came closer to the Egyptian position. It sensed that it is legitimate for Arab confrontational states to pursue their interests in ways different from Tehran’s preferences83. Hence, Iran’s official criticism of the peace process waned and it also accepted the two-state formula devised as a solution to the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict84. Symptoms of that ‘change of heart’ were evident as early as April 1994 when Iran sent a non-participating delegation to the Omani capital Muscat, where multilateral talks on water were held with Israeli presence85.