What does the end of Mubarak mean for Iran?

Iran's view of Egypt

Opportunity and envy

Which Iranian revolution has now broken out in Cairo?

United against the West and its lackeys. Photo: Associated Press

LAST November Iran’s leaders learned that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak nurtured what an American diplomat called a “visceral hatred” for the Islamic Republic, and that he referred to Iranians as “liars”. There was disquiet in Tehran, not least because the source of this information, WikiLeaks, also revealed support among several Arab leaders for bombing Iran. The next month the speaker of Iran’s parliament went to Cairo to patch things up with Mr Mubarak, and there was talk of restoring diplomatic relations, cut in 1979 by the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranians apparently now expect to enjoy this boon with Mr Mubarak’s successor—after the conclusion of a revolution similar to their own.

Kayhan, the hardline establishment’s newspaper of choice, has hailed “the dawning of Khomeini over the Arab Middle East”, while on February 4th Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told worshippers at Friday prayers that Egypt’s “Islamic awakening” had started “in the mosque”. Mr Khamenei has clearly enjoyed the discomfiting of Mr Mubarak, that “enemy of freedom and lackey of the Zionists”. In his sermon the ayatollah even cracked a joke about Mr Mubarak’s name, which means auspicious in Arabic, scoffing at Egypt’s “inauspicious regime”.

For all that, it is unlikely that many senior Iranians expect Egypt to follow the template of 1979. More than physical distance divides the Middle East’s two giants: Iran’s Persian-speaking Shias rub along uneasily with the Sunni Arabs of the southern Mediterranean, whom they regard as their cultural inferiors. Alarmist comparisons by Westerners may also be misleading. Iran’s uprising of 1978-79 was strongly Islamic, while the one in Cairo is not—or not yet. Nonetheless, in Iranian eyes, the fall of Mr Mubarak can only usher in a government less friendly to Israel and less of a “servant”, as Mr Khamenei puts it, of the United States—a government more after Iran’s own revolutionary heart.

Reactions from the main repository of Iranian hopes, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, have been cautious—as you might expect from a group whose radicalism is being scrutinised around the world. Within hours of Mr Khamenei’s sermon, the Brotherhood’s English-language website asserted that the Egyptian uprising was not “Islamic”, but a mass action “far removed from any Islamist groups”. Kamal el-Helbawi, a former spokesman for the Brothers, made the same point in a BBC interview, but went on to thank Mr Khamenei for his support and wished that Egypt had a “good” and “brave” president in the mould of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The prospect of an alliance between revolutionary Iran and Islamist elements in a new Egyptian government is a nightmare for America and Israel. Iran already enjoys great influence in Lebanon through its proxy there, Hizbullah, and has warm relations with Hamas (itself an offshoot of the Muslim Botherhood), in Israel’s Gaza Strip. If Iran were able to make high-placed friends in Egypt, where Mr Ahmadinejad is popular for defying the West, Israel’s sense of encirclement by its most formidable adversary would be almost complete.

For Iran, though, overseas opportunity comes at a time of acute domestic worry. An international sanctions regime imposed on account of the country’s contentious nuclear programme is biting, exacerbated by a recent cut in state subsidies, while protests that followed Mr Ahmadinejad’s contested re-election in 2009 have encouraged the Islamic Republic to shed its final vestiges of democracy. The media is shackled, and executions are occurring at a rate of almost two a day. The main losers of the 2009 poll, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have accused the Islamic Republic of resurrecting the monarchy, “only this time in the name of religion”.

Supporters of Messrs Mousavi and Karroubi believe it is their Green Movement, and not the 1979 revolution, that has inspired protests across the Arab world. But they wonder why their movement was bloodily crushed, whereas those in Egypt and Tunisia have prospered. A big demonstration planned for next week in Tehran, ostensibly in support of the Egyptian protests, will, Mr Karroubi hopes, also pose a challenge to Iran’s government. Among many Iranians, an unfamiliar emotion is evinced for the long-derided Arab: envy.

Related topics:

 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

 Hosni Mubarak

 Iran

 Middle East

 Egypt

The Economist, Feb 10th 2011