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Shah commemorated in Cairo
While the Islamic Republic of Iran struggles to build
diplomatic bridges to Cairo, the Egyptian capital retains a special
place in the hearts of Iranian monarchists.
Farah Diba, widow of the last Shah of Iran, attended
a ceremony on July 27 to commemorate her late husband, who died
in Cairo 24 years ago, in July 1980, six months after being deposed
by the Islamic revolution. The ceremony, attended by members of
the royal family and sympathetic Iranian exiles, has been held annually
for the last 24 years at Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s burial
place in the Rifa’i mosque, at the foot of the Cairo Citadel.
Also in attendance – as every year – was
Jihan Sadat, widow of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who
became a close friend of the Shah during the 1970s.
Egypt was the Iranian royals’ first place of
refuge when they fled their country, landing in Aswan on January
16. Although the Shah subsequently went to a US hospital for cancer
treatment, he returned to Egypt, by way of Panama, before his death.
Sadat provided a state funeral, with Egyptian cabinet ministers
and members of parliament taking part in the procession.
The main memorial ceremony at the Rifa’i, therefore,
was preceded by a brief tribute at Sadat’s tomb in Nasr City,
across the Autostrade from the site of the Egyptian president’s
assassination in October 1981.
Sadat and the Shah shared a common vision of regional
and international issues, according to Hassan Behnam, a French trade
representative and former journalist of Iranian origin with close
ties to the Iranian royal family. The Iranian ruler was one of three
– along with President Nicolae Ceausescu, of Romania and Hafez
Al Assad of Syria – that Sadat consulted with prior to making
his historic trip to Jerusalem in 1977, effectively ending three
decades of open Egyptian-Israeli hostilities. The Shah aimed to
build strong diplomatic relations with everyone, including Israel,
to allow for peaceful discussion of disagreements, Behnam said.
Sadat’s peace overtures secured the return
of occupied lands in Sinai but also led to Egypt’s isolation
in the Arab world and provoked his murder by militant Islamists
in the Egyptian army. In the meantime, the Islamic Revolution put
Iran on a starkly different foreign-policy course, with the new
regime joining the Arab states in shunning Egypt. The Shah fell
from power just two months before the Camp David treaty was concluded,
opening a political rift between the two countries that remains
to this day.
Although welcomed back into the Arab fold by the
end of the 1980s, Egypt has never appointed an ambassador to the
Islamic regime in Iran. The main sore point for several years was
the name of the road in Tehran where the former Egyptian embassy
is located. In January, the Tehran city council agreed to requests
from the Iranian government to drop the name “Khaled Islambouli
Street,” which honored the leader of Sadat’s assassins.
The new name is “Intifada Street,” in reference to the
Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Egypt had refused to countenance any kind of recognition
until the street was renamed. But the government remains reluctant
in any case to open channels with a country that is seen as a sponsor
of international Islamist terrorism. Although President Hosni Mubarak
met his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami in Geneva in December,
the subsequent Iranian announcements of a full restoration of relations
were dismissed by the Egyptian foreign ministry as “premature,”
Reuters reported.
Travel and trade between the two countries, though
possible since the late 1980s, continue to be conducted on only
a limited scale.
According to Iranian exiles at the memorial ceremony,
now is not the time for Egypt to reestablish relations with Iran.
The two countries have looked at the possibility periodically for
more than 10 years, but at this point the future of the Iranian
regime is too uncertain for Egypt to make such a decisive move,
one attendee said. The return to extremism following Iran’s
2002 elections, combined with US concerns over Iran’s nuclear
policies, could indicate that the revolutionary regime is on its
last legs, he said.
Empress Farah has spoken about “Our fight against
dictatorship” on Radio Farda, the Persian-language equivalent
of Radio Sawa, featuring a mix of pop music and political messages
courtesy of the US Department of State. Just as characteristically,
however, the empress gave an interview in late July to Egyptian
women’s magazine Nisf Al-Dunya, in which she related her and
her children’s fond memories of living in Egypt.
The empress handed over the leadership of the exiled
monarchy to her son Reza when he turned 21 in 1981, with a ceremony
held at Cairo’s Al Qubba presidential palace. Reza – now
the presumptive Shah – reportedly stays in close contact with
a variety of Iranian exile organizations, including nationalist
and constitutional monarchist groups as well as those calling for
a full restoration of the monarchy.
Most of the attendees at the July 27 memorial ceremony
were linked with one of these groups. However, many of the roughly
75 who attended came at their own expense, some from as far away
as the west coast of the US, memorial organizers said.
Participants said the memorial was a “personal
matter” for most of those involved. While attendance by regime
figures and members of the royal family has diminished over the
years, some attendees “with no particular links to the regime”
make the trip regularly. Cairo has no significant Iranian community,
although some of those at the Rifa’i mosque were students at
Egyptian universities at the time the Shah was deposed in 1979.
The Iranian monarchy’s ties to Egypt predated
Sadat’s rise to the presidency. The Shah’s first wife
was the sister of King Farouk, who was deposed by the Free Officers
in 1952 and is now also buried in the Rifa’i mosque. Relations
with Egypt in the Nasser period were frequently strained due to
differences over Israel as well as the Shah’s initial wariness
of the republican regime.
Neil MacDonald
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