Turkey and Iran, the latest sign of Egypt’s attempts to reassert itself as a major player in the region.
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, put forward the idea at an Islamic conference in Saudi Arabia earlier this month, and his Foreign Ministry has since been following up.
“We are currently conducting a series of discussions to explore the possibility of holding such a meeting and the expected outcome,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Amr Roshdy told Reuters.
Morsi’s spokesman had earlier said that the countries invited have “real influence” in the region and described Iran as “part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
US officials blocked Iran’s participation in a gathering on Syria held in Turkey earlier this summer. The US officials complained that Iran was part of the problem in Syria, not part of the solution.
Iran, which has been seeking a solution that would help its embattled ally Bashar Al-Assad, welcomed Egypt’s proposal. Deputy Foreign Minister Hossain Amir-Abdollahian said Iran had “its own views about the political process in Syria” that it would present at the meeting.
“We see any foreign intervention, terrorist actions and armed movements as against the wishes of the people of Syria and we believe these foreign interventions are aimed at eliminating the chance to achieve reforms,” he said.
Turkey has also welcomed the Egyptian proposal.
The Syrian crisis, now in its 18th month, involves a complex web of power dynamics in the region and beyond. The US, Turkey and Arab countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have called for Assad’s ouster. Iran has been staunchly defending its Allawite ally in Syria. But it stands alone in the world in doing so.
While Iran complains about foreigners intervening and sending arms to the rebels—Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been sending weapons through Turkey with Turkey’s consent—Iran stands accused by UN investigators of sending arms to Assad.
It isn’t clear if the gathering proposed by Morsi will actually come about. Iran may have some reservations about attending a four-party meeting at which it is the sole state supporting Assad.
Many in the West saw Morsi’s invitation to Iran as an attack on Western efforts to isolate Iran and an effort to bring Iran back into the fold. But some analysts advised waiting. “What if the meeting is held and Iran ends up positioned in opposition to the other three?” one asked. “Might Iran then actually be even more isolated?”
The one clear point of Morsi’s invitation is that he is trying to make Egypt once again a center point of Middle Eastern politics. Ever since Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1979, it has been relegated to the political backwater. One clear goal of all the revolutionaries in Egypt has been to change that and to re-assert Egypt’s traditional regional leadership. In that light, Morsi’s goal in inviting Iran is to boost Egypt’s standing, not Iran’s. In fact, most Egyptians view Iran as a rival for regional leadership. It is possible that Morsi is setting up Iran for a fall—but that remains to be seen.
Iran stands firmly behind Assad’s government, calling it the “axis of resistance” to foreign intervention.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, however, said Iran was “making a mistake by relying on regimes instead of peoples and their popular will. What we call the ‘axis of resistance’ is the will of the Syrian people…. No regime fighting its own people can survive long, [and the Assad regime] has months, and maybe even weeks, not years.”
But Iranian officials and high-level military commanders continue to express their support for Assad. The chief of Iran’s Joint Staff, Major General Hassan Firuzabadi, praised the Syrian government for its “resistance” and urged it to remain steadfast.
“The victory of the resistance in Syria is a great lesson for the Arab and Islamic countries, assisting them in understanding the value of the Islamic resistance and helping them to make models of Iran and Syria as two great models for saving nations, for countering global oppression, and for defending their own national-Islamic culture and independence,” Firuzabadi said.