Iran’s supreme leader opens doors to normalize ties with Egypt

Iran’s supreme leader said on Monday that he “welcomes” the restoration of diplomatic relations between Egypt and Iran, raising hope that Cairo and Tehran will normalize relations after decades of tension.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments came as a number of portals linked to the Iranian presidency were showing images of the two leaders of the opposition group in exile, while others were showing crossed out images of Khamenei and Egyptian President Ebrahim Raisi.

However, Khamenei’s words were broadcast by Iranian state television, which reported on the meeting between the Iranian supreme leader and the Sultan of Oman, Haytham bin Tariq.

Sultan Haytham’s trip to Tehran, his first since coming to power in 2020, is due to the fact that Muscat has long served as an intermediary between Tehran and the West.

For weeks now, there have been growing signs that Egypt and Iran may be able to restore politico-diplomatic relations, especially since Saudi Arabia and Iran did the same in March, brokered by China, after years of tension.

Cairo is dependent on economic support from Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states.

“We welcome this issue and we have no problems in this regard,” Iranian television quoted Khamenei as saying.

However, Khamenei’s words have not yet received a public response from Cairo, whose authorities did not respond to a request for comment, according to the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

In 1979, during the presidency of Anwar el-Sadat (1970/1981), Egypt severed relations with Iran following the Islamic revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

Sadat was a close friend of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was received in Egypt shortly before his death and gave him a state funeral in 1980.

The remains of the Shah are buried in the Al-Rifai Mosque in Cairo.

Egypt’s peace deal with Israel has also angered Iran’s theocratic government, which sees Israel as its main enemy in the region.

After the 2011 Arab Spring and the election of President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, relations with Iran improved, but in a 2013 military coup, Morsi was overthrown and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power , as a result of which the approach to Tehran is not feasible.

Meanwhile, today an Internet social media account that describes itself as a group of hackers has claimed responsibility for taking down web portals associated with the Iranian presidency.

Earlier this month, the account GhyamSarnegouni, whose name means “rise to overthrow” in Farsi, already claimed to have hacked web portals linked to the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Iranian media and authorities did not immediately acknowledge the apparent acts of computer hacking.

However, AP journalists who gained access to the portals found that they were tainted with images of Masood Rajavi, the long-missing leader of the Iranian exile group Mujahideen-e-Khalk, and his wife Maryam, who is now the group’s public face.

One of the portals posted the slogan “Death of Khamenei Raisi – Viva Rajavi”, proving that Khamenei and Raisi were equally affected by alleged software piracy earlier this month.

According to the AP, Iran has been the target of a series of “infamous” computer attacks amid rising tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, “which is rapidly evolving.”

The target of the computer attack was the signal of Iranian state television, as well as gas stations supplying subsidized fuel, which published images from government surveillance cameras, including high-security cameras.