Iran on Tuesday applauded the Egyptian parliament’s demand a day earlier that
Cairo expel its Israeli ambassador over air strikes in the Gaza
Strip.
“Egypt will never be the friend, partner or ally of the Zionist
entity which we consider as the first enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation,” said
the statement from Egypt’s lower house of parliament, which called on the
Egyptian government to “revise all its relations and agreements with that
enemy.”
The text called for supporting Palestinian “resistance... in all
its kind and forms” in the face of the Jewish state’s “aggressive policies,”
Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported. The statement – approved unanimously
in the Islamist-dominated chamber – also called for pulling Egypt’s ambassador
from Tel Aviv and for an immediate end to natural gas exports to
Israel.
Parliament Speaker Mohamed Saad el- Katatni – representing the
Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party – asked a parliamentary committee
to “follow the government’s implementation of parliament’s demands,” MENA
reported.
News of the statement was welcomed in Tehran, whose Shi’ite
theocracy has enjoyed warming ties with Egypt since its former president Hosni
Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising over a year ago.
The move by the
Egyptian parliament was a “natural” and “logical” response to “the crimes of the
Zionist regime,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said
Tuesday, according to the English-language Tehran Times.
“When people in
independent countries take over the helm of affairs, they do not tolerate the
crimes of the Zionist regime, and the move by the Egyptian parliament was a
natural response,” Mehmanparast said. “The move by the Egyptian parliament is
considered logical... and we hope that all regional countries will
achieve a good degree of independence to end invasions of the occupying Zionist
regime.”
Islamists – led by the Brotherhood but also including hardline
Salafists and the more mainstream Al-Wasat party – make up about 70 percent of
Egypt’s lower house of parliament and a similar proportion of the
largely-ceremonial upper house, or Shura Council.
Egypt’s parliament is
responsible for appointing a 100-member constituent assembly in charge of
drafting a new constitution for the country. Islamists would like to see the new
document reduce the powers of the presidency in favor of the
legislature.
Monday’s vote is largely symbolic, as ultimate authority in
Egypt still resides with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that
took control of the government after Mubarak’s exit.
Yaakov Amitai,
Israel’s new ambassador in Cairo, presented his credentials to SCAF leader Field
Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi last month. Still, the Israeli envoy there has
remained without a home since September, when the embassy was evacuated after
hundreds of rioters stormed the premises, looted the offices and removed the
Israeli flag.