The relationship between Iran and Egypt has been marked by periods of close ties, deep rivalry, and recent attempts at reconciliation. This complex history, set against the backdrop of regional and global politics, reflects the shifting dynamics of the Middle East.
Map of Egypt and Iran
Early Ties and Royal Connections
The two countries forged close ties during the 1930s, when the Iranian crown prince, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, married Egyptian Princess Fawzia Faud. A fitting moment to start would be 1939, when Pahlavi, then the young crown prince of Iran, was married to Princess Fawzia Farouk of Egypt, the sister of King Farouk. This was a clear bid by Pahlavi's father, Reza Shah, to link Iran's royal family with Egypt's, then a far wealthier family.
The relationship between Iran and Egypt had fallen into open hostility after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 which brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power and the CIA-backed coup d'état in Iran in 1953 which saw the return of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power.
However, attitudes changed when Ottoman expansion tipped the balance of power in the Middle East.
After the 1922 Declaration of Egyptian Independence, Iran's representation to Egypt was upgraded to a delegation, the only eastern country with a presence in Egypt. Egypt was the first Arab country to have a diplomatic mission in Iran after Reza Khan became Shah of Iran.
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In 1928, both countries signed a friendship treaty, followed by a trade agreement in 1930.
In 1939, diplomatic relations between Egypt and Iran were upgraded to ambassadorial level, and Youssef Zulficar Pasha was appointed as Egypt's first ambassador in Tehran.
"Only two weeks before the wedding the royal bride and groom had never met," pointed out the announcer for the Gaumont British News at the time, before quipping: "It seems a strange eastern custom. But not so strange as sometimes happens in the west, when only two weeks after the wedding, bride and groom wish they'd never met." Ultimately, the marriage never amounted to much. Neither loved the other and Fawzia missed Egypt badly - and finally returned there in 1945. While the two had one child, a daughter, the pair were officially divorced in 1948.
World War II and its Aftermath
Egypt and Iran had also both been caught up in the Second World War. Iran was invaded by Britain and the Soviet Union in 1941; Reza Shah left the country and the 21-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became shah.
For his first decade in power, the young shah was in a very weak position. "Until '53, my life was a succession of pain and suffering and humiliation," he once recalled. Iran was a major logistical hub for Allied support for the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany throughout the war. Iran's famous Veresk Bridge became known as "Pol-e Piroozi", "the bridge of victory".
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Egypt was, of course, the site of the war's two decisive battles in El Alamein, between Britain and Axis powers Germany and Italy, a mere 150 miles from Cairo.
The Farouk monarchy was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement in 1952 and one of its members, the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, became Egypt's president shortly thereafter. Relations with Iran would suffer as the two regimes later became major rivals in the region.
Diverging Paths: Nasser vs. the Shah
Shared histories of colonial interference shaped the friendship between Egypt and Iran during the oil nationalisation crisis, yet in the years after the 1952 coup in Egypt, which brought down the monarchy and ultimately brought Nasser to power, Egypt and Iran’s paths diverged. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, while Nasser was inspired by the prospects of Afro-Asian solidarity, the shah’s government was concerned with the need for moderation, and to maintain close ties to the West. One year later, after the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Nasser became the leading voice of pan-Arabism, which the shah viewed as a major threat both to regional security and to his reign.
During the 1950s, Britain, whose empire had just collapsed, sought to retain control over two valuable imperial possessions in both Iran and Egypt. In Iran, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Britain's "single largest overseas asset", and in Egypt, the Suez Canal. Both were nationalised in the 1950s, resulting in retaliation by infuriated British governments.
In Iran, the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh famously nationalised Iran's oil reserves in 1951, an action so significant that Time Magazine chose him as its "Man of the Year". Two years later, amid political tumult in Iran that resulted in Pahlavi briefly fleeing the country, Mossadegh was overthrown, largely as a result of an Anglo-American coup against him. In Egypt, Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal resulted in direct British military action against Egypt.
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As part of a plot hatched with both France and Israel, Britain attacked Egypt in a bid to retake control of the canal and topple Nasser. The effort ended in an abysmal failure when the Americans pressured the three powers to retreat, which they subsequently did. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who masterminded the effort, resigned shortly thereafter.
A Political History of Contemporary Iran
At arguably the height of his power and influence, Mossadegh sought an alliance between Iran and Egypt against Britain. On November 22, 1951, during a joint press conference with Egypt's Prime Minister Mustafa El Nahas Pasha, the Iranian prime minister wept while telling journalists that "a united Iran and Egypt will together demolish British imperialism" and that by uniting they would "close the doors to all foreign imperialism".
He declared that he sought to expand a treaty of friendship and commerce adopted between Cairo and Tehran in 1928 and use it as the basis of "multilateral agreements on a wider scope so as to include Arab, Near and Middle Eastern countries which were linked to Egypt and Persia by friendly ties". None of this came to be. Under Nasser, Egypt never had good ties with the shah's Iran. In 1950, Iran gave de-facto recognition to the State of Israel, something that deeply irked Nasser, who promulgated Pan-Arabism and staunch opposition to Israel. Consequently, Nasser often depicted the shah as a lackey of the Americans and Israelis.
The shah, for his part, deeply feared Nasser and his influence in the Middle East. He began secret dealings with Israel in 1958 to establish a covert broadcasting station in the Iranian city of Ahwaz, capital of the country's Khuzestan province, that broadcasted anti-Nasser propaganda across the Middle East.
The shah also suspected Nasser had some hand in the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy that same year, an event that deeply worried him, given how members of the Iraqi monarchy were brutally murdered. He also feared that Nasser supported Arab separatists in Khuzestan. In the late 1940s, the shah had to deal with Soviet-backed Azeri and Kurdish separatist movements that successfully broke away from the rest of the country for a brief period. It's likely he feared Nasser doing the same in Khuzestan.
In July 1960, Nasser directly denounced the shah for "selling himself cheaply to imperialism and Zionism". Arras Aram, Iran's minister for foreign affairs at the time, responded by calling Nasser a "feeble-minded pharaoh of Egypt" and declaring that Iran would not recognise his "illegal regime". Nasser broke ties with Iran in 1960, ostensibly over its recognition of Israel a decade earlier. In reality, Tehran had given de-facto acknowledgement of the existence of the Israeli government. At a 1960 press conference, the shah stressed to the Arab states that this stance remained the same and that he was not moving to fully recognise Israel.
Nasser's Egypt was also believed to have been behind a series of broadcasts across the Middle East denouncing the shah. Those broadcasts urged Iranians, among other things, to "kill the pig of a shah and throw his body into a river" and appealws to the Iranian army to "raise up and rend the oppressor of the people into a million pieces".
In December 1964, Nasser once again hurled insults at the shah, again calling him "a stooge for America and Zionism" and claiming that both had told the Iranian autocrat to insult Egypt - under the belief that "what he says will be accepted as coming from a Muslim country". "Though Iran is a Muslim country, we do not consider the shah as a Muslim as he is subjected to Zionist influence," Nasser said at the time, echoing the kind of rhetoric used by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Nasser's Egypt militarily intervened in the Yemeni Civil War that raged throughout the 1960s - a campaign that has since been dubbed "Egypt's Vietnam" in light of the fact it cost the lives of more than 10,000 Egyptian troops over five years and cost the country billions of dollars.
The presence of Egyptian armed forces on the southern shores of the Gulf made regional powers, including Imperial Iran, nervous. The shah directly accused Nasser of waging "aggression" against Yemen and said the presence of Egyptian troops in the region constituted "an act of aggression". "Why else would Egypt keep 50,000 troops there?" he asked rhetorically at the time, stressing that Tehran did not recognise the Egypt-backed Republican regime in Yemen "because it does not represent the will of the Yemeni people".
Despite his denunciations, the shah said at the same time that he welcomed improved relations with Egypt - provided that Nasser overcame "his difficulties with us in the realisation of our programme and his programme..." In 1966, the shah believed the threat posed by Communism and the Soviet Union had declined considerably "but the danger of aggression from some of our Arab neighbours remains and cannot be ignored". It was clear he was referring to neighbouring Iraq, but also Nasser's Egypt further afield.
That same year, his longest-serving prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, also expressed Tehran's opposition to Egyptian forces in the wider Gulf region. Upon referring to Egypt, Hoveyda said: "We feel the Persian Gulf belongs to the states of the Persian Gulf. There is no room for outsiders."
In June 1967, Egypt suffered a devastating military defeat at the hand of the Israelis, with 80 percent of its air force wiped out on the very first day of the war in a devastating surprise attack. Despite suffering that military defeat, Tehran was still wary of Egyptian military strength by late 1967.
The shah and Hoveyda still expressed fears at that time that Cairo could take over the oil-rich Gulf region. "We cannot risk what we have accomplished in this country," Hoveyda said after being asked if the Egyptian defeat the previous summer had changed Tehran's calculations.
Brief Thaw and Renewed Hostility
By August 1970, Iran and Egypt decided to resume full relations. After the 1967 war, Iran and Egypt slowly repaired relations. Iran supported an Israeli withdrawal from captured Arab lands. Following Nasser's death in 1970, the presidency of Anwar Sadat turned the relationship around quickly into an open and cordial friendship. Sadat visited Tehran in October 1971, meeting with the Shah. The relationship between Cairo and Tehran became so friendly that the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, called Sadat his "dear brother."
In January 1975, Egypt and Iran issued a joint communique calling upon Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. After the 1973 war with Israel, Iran assumed a leading role in cleaning up and reactivating the blocked Suez Canal with heavy investment. During the war, Iran allowed Soviet planes to use Iranian airspace to deliver military supplies to Egypt, as well as providing Egypt with loans and grants in exchange for the use of Egypt's Mediterranean ports. Iran also facilitated the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Sinai Peninsula by promising to substitute with free Iranian oil to the Israelis if they withdrew from the Egyptian oil wells in Western Sinai.
By the time of the Iranian Revolution and the shah's infamous departure from the country in January 1979, after which he travelled the world to various countries seeking refuge, Sadat was the only Arab leader to lend support to his old friend. Khomeini, in turn, called upon the Egyptians to overthrow Sadat - just as the Iranians had overthrown the shah. Khomeini staunchly opposed the Camp David peace accord between Egypt and Israel and consequently severed relations with Cairo.
Just as Nasser once denounced the shah as an American stooge and ally of Israel, the new regime in Iran did the same against Sadat. The shah died of cancer on July 27, 1980, and was buried in Cairo, where his tomb remains to the present day. The following year, President Sadat was ruthlessly assassinated by four gunmen led by the Islamist militant Khalid Isalbouli. Tehran rejoiced and even named a street after Isalbouli.
Shortly after Sadat was gunned down, Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, the second most powerful Ayatollah in Iran at that time, called upon Egyptians to take advantage of the assassination and rise up against the government. "Don't let the American regime [in Egypt] recover," Montazeri urged Egyptians. "Muslim nation of Egypt, your Islamic movement has entered a new stage with the destruction of the Pharaoh of Egypt and an important element of the shameful first Camp David treaty of enslavement."
The Iran-Iraq War and Continued Estrangement
Hosni Mubarak succeeded Sadat. Under his lengthy autocratic tenure as president, Egypt and Iran never restored ties. Throughout the eight-year Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Mubarak never spoke in favour of Iran's actions.
By the summer of 1982, the Iranians had ejected all invading Iraqi forces from Khuzestan and launched a counteroffensive of their own into Iraq that lasted until the war's end six years later. Egypt opposed Iran's counteroffensive. Cairo also provided the Iraqis with anti-personnel artillery rounds for use against the infamous Iranian human-wave infantry attacks against their positions.
Egypt was an extremely important peripheral country for the Arab states fearful of an Iranian victory over Iraq. As one Associated Press analysis noted in 1982, since Syria was essentially on the Iranian side of that war, "the only other Arab force capable of checking an Iranian advance into Iraq is Egypt's 367,000-member army".
In October 1983, Mubarak even warned Tehran that Egypt would take military action against Iran if it lived up to its threat to either close the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf or attack Arab ports there. Throughout the conflict, Egyptians argued it should intervene if Iraq were at risk of losing. Egyptians generally sympathised far more with the Iraqis. In the 1980s approximately one-million Egyptian guest workers also lived in Iraq. "Security in this region is part of the security of Egypt," Mubarak declared in January 1988. "Egypt under no circumstances will relinquish the obligation to safeguard the security of its sister Arab powers."
In May 1987, Egypt severed its remaining ties with Iran by closing its tiny two-member interest section in Cairo and recalling its sole diplomat from Tehran. Cairo made this move after accusing Tehran of giving financial backing to 37 Islamists the Egyptian security forces had just arrested.
Even late in the war, when a US missile destroyer shot down the Iran Air Flight 655 Airbus over the Gulf, killing all 290 civilians aboard, Mubarak still blamed Iran. While describing the incident as "a very big disaster", he went on to state: "At the same time, I blame Iran because of the existence of the state of war and because of its refusal to accept peace efforts."
Iran did agree to a ceasefire with Iraq in August 1988, which formally ended the eight-year conflict which left more than a million dead in its wake.
Approaching a New Century: Tentative Steps Towards Rapprochement
In July 1990, one month after a deadly earthquake killed 40,000 people in northwest Iran, Egypt sent relief supplies. This led to a brief thaw between the two nations and even some talk of restoring ties.
In December 1992, Egypt was once again condemning Iran. This time it alleged that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary were training Islamist fighters opposed to the Mubarak regime in neighbouring Sudan. In 1993, both Egypt and Iran tried to win favour from Saudi Arabia in their rivalry. Mubarak wanted the Saudis and their allies to help his country in preventing Iran from supporting various Islamist groups opposed to his regime. The Iranians, on the other hand, wanted the Saudis to oppose Egyptian participation in the Gulf region's security in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Riyadh opted to remain relatively neutral in their rivalry at that time, with one Saudi official stressing: "We have to balance, we have to hear both sides of the stories."
In June 2000, Iran and Egypt had their first soccer match, in which the latter narrowly won. The game was hailed as a diplomatic victory between the two countries. The same month, Iran's then-president Mohammad Khatami spoke with Mubarak by phone, the first time leaders from the two countries had spoken directly since the revolution.
Then, in December 2003, the two presidents met on the sidelines of a conference in Geneva and the following month Khalid Isalbouli Street in Tehran was renamed Intifada Street, a likely clear reference to the Palestinian Intifada against Israel. These two developments were again small, but not insignificant, signs of a thaw in Egypt-Iran relations.
Then, in December 2005, Iran extradited Mustafa Hamza, an Islamist who was believed to have taken part in Sadat's assassination and an attempted assassination of Mubarak in 1995. This too was another sign at the time as another step towards restoring relations.
More Recent Developments
"Ties between the countries-among the largest and most influential in the Middle East-were turned hostile once again following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. In 2007, relations between the two countries thawed in the fields of diplomacy and economic trade, only to retreat during the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict when Iranian and Egyptian politicians exchanged blames over inaction towards the escalation of the conflict. It was not until the official resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 that relations started to improve significantly.
In April 2012, Iran appointed an ambassador to Egypt. Soon after Mohamed Morsi visited Iran in August 2012, it was decided to reestablish bilateral diplomatic relations, with rededication of embassy locations. A first ambassador was nominated to represent Egypt in Iran.
In 2023, in the aftermath of the Chinese brokered Saudi-Iran Deal, Egypt and Iran have had numerous rounds of talks in Oman aimed at restoring relations between the two countries.
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