Morsi to visit Iran • CAIRO — Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi will attend a summit in Iran this month, a presidential official said Saturday, the first such trip for an Egyptian leader since relations with Iran deteriorated decades ago.
The visit could mark a thaw between the two countries after years of enmity, especially since Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic revolution.
Under Morsi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, predominantly Sunni Muslim, sided with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Arab states in trying to isolate Shiite-led Iran.
It’s too early to assess the implications of the visit or to what extent the Arab world’s most populous country might normalize relations with Iran, but analysts think it will bring Egypt back to the regional political stage. The visit is in line with popular sentiment since Mubarak’s ouster for Cairo to craft a foreign policy independent of Western or oil gulf countries’ agendas.
“This really signals the first response to a popular demand and a way to increase the margin of maneuver for Egyptian foreign policy in the region,” said political scientist Mustafa Kamel el-Sayyed. The Associated Press
