UAE-Egypt Crisis: Mubarak and Iran Lurk in the Background

Source :  Al Akhbar English

Wednesday’s visit by the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Akbar Salehi to Egypt only added more fuel to the fire burning between Cairo and the United Arab Emirates.

Tensions between the two countries intensified after the recent arrest of 11 Egyptians in the UAE on charges of belonging to a secret Muslim Brotherhood cell that was plotting to destabilize the country.

Abu Dhabi fears that relations between its long-time foe Iran and, until recently, its close ally Egypt will improve as its relations with Cairo sour.

According to head of the Cairo-based al-Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies Mustafa al-Labbad, Egyptian-Iranian relations have a long way to go before they return to normal.

He dismisses the idea that Salehi’s visit will significantly change the nature of the relationship between the two countries, arguing that it is intended to prevent relations from worsening.

As an example, he points out the collapse of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi’s attempt to bring together Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to devise a solution for resolving the Syrian crisis.

In the case of the UAE, he attributes the increasing tensions to “threats that the regime is sensing, particularly from the rising star of the Islah Front in the UAE, which is seen as a shadow branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Saudi Arabia, too, shares the same concerns that the Muslim Brotherhood will one day influence a section of the Saudi elite that is independent of the regime, thus threatening Riyadh’s influential role in the Arab world.”

Former advisor to the Egyptian foreign minister Hani Khlaf largely agrees with Labbad, criticizing Mursi’s speech at the last Summit of the Non- Aligned in Tehran, in which the Egyptian president “reminded us of sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shia.”

He adds that any new government in Egypt was bound to have problems with those Gulf countries that once had warm and close relations with the fallen Mubarak regime.

He suggests that one source of Abu Dhabi’s frustrations toward Cairo may be due to the fact that successive Egyptian governments after the revolution “refused an offer by the Emirates to pay a large sum of money – possibly amounting to billions of dollars – to keep Mubarak out of jail.”

Khlaf explains that the UAE did this out of loyalty to Mubarak, adding that Egypt’s current relationship with the Arab Gulf countries after the revolution is the opposite of what it was before.

“For example, the Mubarak regime maintained close ties with the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain before the revolution as compared to tepid relations with Qatar and Kuwait,” Khlaf says.

“These two countries,” he adds, “were therefore more supportive of any attempts to shed remnants of the old order, as opposed to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, in particular.”

Khlaf further attributes the crisis to “the presence of symbols of the old [Egyptian] regime in the Emirates, in addition to businessmen who had ties to Mubarak.”

Many of them, he explains, are very influential, having developed close contacts with a number of powerful members of the Emirati ruling class and have been granted residency there as a result.

And it did not help that the Egyptian presidency showed such high concern for the alleged Muslim Brotherhood cell, according to Khlaf.

It was to such an extent that Egypt’s intelligence chief, Rifaat Shehata, joined the high-level delegation sent to the UAE to look into the case of those arrested.