IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION, AHMADINEJAD OF IRAN CALLS FOR PAN-ISLAMISM

International conferences serve also bilateral ends.  So is with the 12th Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which took place in Cairo on February 5 and 6.  Nearly 50% of the membership of 57 States attended.  But the only Head of State whose presence eclipsed all others was Ahmadinejad of Iran.

This is significant in the context of the Egyptian Revolution.  No Iranian Head of Sate had set foot in the largest Arab State, Egypt, since the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979.  That treaty caused Tehran to sever its diplomatic relations with Cairo.  And when President Sadat, who had taken that bold step, was assassinated in 1981, a main thoroughfare in Tehran was renamed after the killer (Al-Islambolly).  Mubarak, who succeeded Sadat, never forgave the mullahs in Iran for those transgressions.

With Mubarak now in jail, and Morsi, who came from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the Presidential palace, the new Egypt felt it was necessary to break with the past.  Egyptian diplomacy in the post January 25, 2011 revolution lost no opportunity to assert Egypt's divorce from the era of military dictatorship.  Thus Iran was one of those priority areas where Cairo could declare from the top of its hundreds of mingrets its independence from the old quiet alliances.

There is another layer to the cultural archeology of Egypt.  Though largely a Sunni State, Egypt remains warm to the Shiis.  Cairo was established in the 10th century by a great Shii regime, the Fatimides. (Their name came from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad; the wife of Aly, Muhammad's cousin and protege; and the mother of two of the shining lights of Shiism, Hassan and Al-Hussein).

The historic mosque and university, Al-Azhar, was also built by the Fatimides in Cairo about the same time. (It teaches the Shii main school of thought side by side with the four main Sunni schools.  It is no accident that Al-Azhar and the great mosque of Al-Hussein, where Egyptian tradition holds that Al-Hussein's head is buried there, stand next to one another.  Millions of Sunni Egyptians flock to that magnificent shrine to pray and invoke the glorified name of Muhammad's grandson who was martyred in Iraq.  Next to those great edifices, one finds a section of old Cairo called "Fatimide Cairo."

Now back to Ahmadinejad in Cairo.  After being welcomed on February 5 by President Morsi, his first two steps were, predictably, to pray at Al-Hussein shrine, meet with Dr. Ahmed Al-Taiyeb, the Al-Azhar Rector, and hold a press conference to extol the historic relationships between Iran and Egypt.

It was Al-Azhar's Rector, El-Taiyeb, a graduate of the Sorbonne, who articulated a framework for a new relationship between Cairo and Tehran.  Though Ahmadinejad flashed the V sign to the media prior to the Taiyeb-Ahmadinejad mini-summit, Al-Azhar called upon Iran to act on the following issues:

• to respect the Sunni veneration of the three Caliphs who preceded Imam Aly (Shii means Partisans of Aly) in leading he then emerging Muslim nation after the passing of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam;
• to accord equal rights to the Sunnis in Al-Ahwaz, the Iranian western province populated largely by Arabs and overlooking the Gulf;
• to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the Gulf States, especially the State of Bahrain, a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council of six States; and
• to fully cooperate in stopping the blood bath in Syria where the present civil war has left more than 60,000 Syrians dead and 2.5 million refugees displaced either internally or externally.

For his part, the Iranian President declared at a press conference that "I came to Al-Azhar to advocate unity between Sunnis and Shiis.  We want to fix together what divides us.  This is our solemn duty at present.  Like riders in a bus, they can differ in their views, but the bus is moving towards one destination."

Meanwhile, Egypt's Foreign Minister, Muhammad Kamel Amr, hurried to calm down the nerves of the Gulf States.  The new Egypt, in its external relationships, he declared, shall not act at the expense of the security of other States.  Then pointedly he added, "For Egypt, the security of the Gulf States is a red line.  Their security is integral to the security of Egypt."

Accentuating that call for keeping the Gulf States safe from Iranian interference, the Egyptian Salafis (Sunni extremists) declared that Egypt, the largest Sunni state, has the duty and obligation to protect "the Arab Gulf" from any undue influence from outside, being it political, cultural, or military.

Beyond all those declarations lies a factual certainty: The relationship between Iran and Egypt are inching ever closer to one another.  Morsi of Egypt began the process of warming up to that relationship.  He was the first Egyptian Head of State to visit Iran since the Khemeini Islamic revolution of 1979.  That took place when he attended the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Tehran in August, 2012.

With Iran now being the object of severe western sanctions because of its present nuclear program, Tehran needed to show its public and the world that its foreign affairs outside that wall of sanctions were not impaired.

Reflecting that dynamic was a significant interview granted by Ahmadinejad in Tehran, prior to his Cairo visit, to Al-Ahram newspaper which speaks for the Egyptian Government.  In that interview, he made the following declarations in order to frame his global outlook:

• Iran has now become a nuclear power.  And soon it shall be a State with advanced outer space capabilities;
• Sanctions have "affected somewhat our economy."  But through Iranian productivity, Iran shall make up for any deficit;
• Egypt and Iran, the two States with civilizational depth, should unite their effects to ensure regional and world peace;
• Islam is "our path to unity"