Political
analyst Yasser el-Zaatreh, a native of Jericho, has been freelancing for 27 years. He wrote this think
piece in Arabic for Aljazeera.net
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| File pictures of Morsi and Ahmadinejad |
Egyptian leaders are keeping nose to grindstone to
mitigate internal disquiet.
They are less focused on recovering Cairo’s Arab and
regional clout and role.
So before Egypt overcomes its internal travails, its
leadership will find it hard to conjure up a clear Arab and regional vision.
Where events in Syria are concerned, Cairo remains as
supportive of the Syrian people as it can be.
President Mohamed Morsi’s Syria statements and
Cairo’s backing of the Arab League decision giving Syria’s seat to the Syrian
Opposition Coalition corroborate this. The Arab League switch would not have
been possible without Egypt’s full backing.
When discussing Egypt’s stance on Syria, we’re
talking by implication about the position of Iran, which sees in Bashar
al-Assad’s political survival the cornerstone of its strategy in the region.
After all, Iran effectively sacrificed its relations
with the best part of the Ummah to preserve this
immoral position. And the Islamic Republic’s loss on that matter is immeasurable
by strategic standards.
Morsi would not have been supportive of the Syrian
opposition had he been anxious to win Iran’s heart and mind.
He is aware that vexing Iran could tempt her to
support and fund his opponents, if not tamper with Egypt’s internal security –
chiefly in the soft areas of Sinai, where tribal groups and some Islamists are
being led to believe they could challenge “Zionists” from that particular
frontline.
On his February trip to Egypt for the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not
meet with Morsi except at Cairo airport, which is where Ahmadinejad offered him
oil grants and financial support. Morsi simply ignored the offer.
Likewise, you can’t read much into the bilateral
tourism promotion agreement between Egypt and Iran and the normalization of their
commercial ties.
By comparison, tourism and commerce links between
Turkey and Iran continue to prosper even though the two countries are
exchanging blows in Syria and fighting a cold war across the region.
This is not to mention Tehran’s attempts to play the
Kurdish card – a no-hoper since Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his historic peace
deal with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
While Egypt has yet to resume diplomatic relations
with Iran and bilateral tourism and commerce is just beginning, Arab Gulf states
and the Islamic Republic share a wide range of diplomatic, tourism and trade
links. For instance, hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel to Saudi Arabia annually
to perform the Hajj and Umrah.
Tens of thousands of Iranians also visit the UAE, Kuwait and Oman.
So can Morsi and his government overlook Egypt’s
economic interests and shut out Iran? And is Egypt’s national security so
porous as to be easily compromised by Tehran?
This takes us to the preoccupation of many people
with Shi’ization (or the “missionary-style” spread of Shiism).
In truth, the obsession with Shi’ization is an insult
to the Sunni branch of Islam, depicting it as vulnerable and easily pliable,
which is far from being the case.
Inasmuch as Alawites are part of Shiite Islam, did 40-plus
years of Alawite rule in Syria convert the country’s Sunni majority to Shiism?
More importantly, was Shiite Iran able to Shi’ize its
own Sunni population (of about 10 percent) over the years?
Iran’s occasional dabbling in Shi’ization drives is
provocative, featherbrained and futile. But the Arabs’ problem with Iran is far
from being sectarian. The problem is political par excellence.
Egypt, it must be said, is a regional heavyweight
with an impressive cultural and historical legacy. It is also home to the millennium-old
Al-Azhar University,
the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni
theology and Islamic law, and to Al-Azhar Mosque.
The
future will show that whoever thinks Iran can gobble up and Shi’ize Egypt is
hallucinating.
Egypt
will never fall in Iran’s lap, neither under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood
nor under anyone else. Politics, history and the balance of power won’t let
this happen.
Let’s
stop portraying Iran as an omnipotent sovereign when it is wobbling under the
weight of its problems in Syria, in Iraq and at home.
Iran
will revert to its original size once Assad is shown the door. The Arab world
will then have no problem building good neighborly relations with Tehran as it now
has with Ankara.
