Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was both kissed and scolded yesterday when he began the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian President since Tehran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
The trip was meant to underline a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state, President Mohamed Morsi, last June. But it also highlighted deep theological and geopolitical differences.
Morsi, a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, kissed Ahmadinejad after he landed at Cairo airport and gave him a red carpet reception with military honours. Ahmadinejad beamed as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.
But the Shi’ite Iranian leader received a stiff rebuke when he met Egypt’s leading Sunni Muslim scholar later at Cairo’s historic al-Azhar mosque and university.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old seat of religious learning, urged Iran to refrain from interfering in Gulf Arab states, to recognise Bahrain as a “sisterly Arab nation” and rejected the extension of Shi’ite Muslim influence in Sunni countries, a statement from al-Azhar said.
Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins today, Ahmadinejad told a news conference he hoped his trip would be “a new starting point in relations between us”. However, a senior cleric from the Egyptian seminary, Hassan al-Shafai, who appeared alongside him, said the meeting had degenerated into an exchange of theological differences.
The visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.
“The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question,” Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his trip.
He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbours Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. “If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people,” Ahmadinejad said.