Iran playing political cards in Arab world – Egypt FM
Published: Sunday, June 15, 2008
19:34GMT—3:34PM/EST
EGYPT – IRAN – MIDDLE – EAST
Washington, 15 June (IranVNC)—Iran is “on a surge” in the Arab world and imagines it can influence the region in order to serve its own interests, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in an interview today.
“The political cards which Iran holds… it holds out of a desire to defend Iranian interests. It might be Iran’s right to try, but Egypt has a right to defend Arab territory,” Aboul Gheit said in an interview with Egypt’s Rose al-Yousef newspaper, published today in English by the state-run MENA news agency.
“You now find that Iran is on a surge and it imagines that it is able to influence the region. Perhaps they can influence the region, but we always say to our friends in Iran: ‘Let the influence on the region be positive,’” he said in the interview, which was reported by Reuters.
Aboul Gheit also said Iran is serving its own interests in Lebanon, where it backs the opposition Shiite militant group, Hezbollah.
“What we see now in Lebanon … amounts to the achievements of gains by an Islamic party by which I mean Iran, which holds many of the cards,” he said. “It does not hold these cards out of a desire to defend Arab interests.”
He also said that Iran is hampering the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by supporting Hamas in order to increase leverage to undermine US policy and in response to the ongoing dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
“This has a negative effect on the Palestinian question, definitely, and in Lebanon to some extent,” he said.
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said many times in the past year that he wanted to restore ties with Egypt, and earlier this year spoke with his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, over the telephone.
Iran cut ties with Egypt in 1979 when Cairo signed a peace treaty with Israel and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat granted asylum to the deposed Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Khalid Islambouli, who is remembered in Tehran today by a street that bears his name.
Egypt has said Iran must change the street’s name before ties can be formally restored.
Sources: Reuters, Los Angeles Times
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