President Mohamed Morsi has some friends that don’t see eye to eye.
Members of the Iranian parliament earlier this week congratulated Morsi for being president, According to the Iranian IRNA news agency. But following his victory in the Egyptian presidential elections, Morsi received a lot of messages of congratulations.
Tehran would be none too pleased if it realised that among the well wishes was one, from the Free Syrian Army, fighting its client regime in Syria.
In the message the spokesperson for the army said “we call on him (Morsi) to make sure that Egypt based on its Islamic, Arabic and humanitarian responsibility towards the Syrian people, to support our revolution….”
In a conference held for the Syrian opposition members in Cairo on Monday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry (FM) said Egypt strongly opposed the violent repression of peaceful protesters in Syria, demanding that the violence be stopped immediately, according to state-run Al-Ahram newspaper.
More than 200 members from the Syrian opposition were attending the two day meeting, which began Wednesday.
Representatives of the FM went on to say that they want the targeting of civilians to end and that the crimes in Syria need to be investigated.
Even though Syria is not the only uprising in the region hoping for Egypt’s revolution to bolster it, according to the Washington Post, the impact of Morsi’s victory will be felt the most in Syria, where the opposition to the regime are largely drawn from the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It’s the international factors, namely Iran and Turkey, each meddling in their own way in the Syrian uprising, which have complicated matters further.
Each one is supporting a different team, with Iran supporting the Bashar Al-Assad regime and Turkey being among the most vocal in opposition to the regime.
Iran is so eager to win Egypt to its side that state-run Fars news Agency fabricated an interview with Mohamed Morsi published the day of his announcement as president quoting him saying he is going to forge ties with Iran to create “strategic balance” in the region.
The president’s office denied ever making those statements and added they intend to file a law suit against the news provider.
Still, fabricated statements and supporting the Syrian opposition would not necessarily mean an end to Egyptian-Iranian relations. Morsi will be meeting with the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian capital Tehran on 29 and 30 August.
According to Al Tahrir newspaper Egyptian Ambassador to Iran, Amr Ramadan said that in their scheduled August meeting, Morsi will be handing over the presidency of the Non-aligned Movement to Iran.
While at his speech at Cairo University earlier this week, President Mohamed Morsi called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria earning him praise, even jubilation from the opposition in Syria.
The uprising in Syria has certainly been the deadliest in all of the Arab uprisings, with human rights agencies reporting that the death toll is approaching 15,000. Still, Syria is not the only uprising that has seen brutal violence, the uprising in Sudanese being only the most recent.
