Sometimes you rejoice because someone prominent decided to accept your invitation, overcoming decades of estrangement and sensitivities. This applies to both individuals and nations. So the joy would be double if the inviter is Iran, and the invitee is Mohamed Mursi, the president of post-revolutionary Egypt who comes from the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet experience tells us that the door for surprises remains always open, and that polite visitors sometimes do not hesitate from spoiling the party they were invited to. This is what happened. Iran has the right to rejoice at the holding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit on its land, despite the fact that this bloc has lost its weight after the demise of the world into which it was born and its balances. It is no strange thing that the presidency of NAM is entrusted to those with question marks surrounding their foreign policy, in terms of whether it is deserving of the title of “non-alignment". Indeed, there was a time when NAM was headed by a man called Fidel Castro, who was a thorn in the side of United Nations, long before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged and started denouncing 'Great Satan'. The Iranian regime has a right to rejoice, because it can now tell its people that it is not in isolation on the regional and international levels. To prove this, it can cite the participation of this or that head of state in its summit. Here, it is no strange thing either, that Iran gave Mursi a special place. He is the head of the largest Arab country, and his participation has many an implication at a time when the region is reeling from Shiite-Sunni tensions. The Iranian regime can also exploit the occasion to restate its policies, particularly those concerning the nuclear program and the relationship with the Security Council and the major Western powers. Here, we cannot but admit to Iran's cunning. Those who listened to Ahmadinejad's speech yesterday about injustice, poverty and the rights of peoples almost came out with the impression that he is a representative of the Green Party or a human rights activist. The Iranian regime had also hoped that the NAM summit would help it improve its position in an issue that affects its role, image and long term political-security stakes in the region, namely the inflamed Syrian issue. Here, Iran had perhaps rushed in rejoicing in Mursi's call for a quadripartite contact group that brings together the leading countries in the region, in order to extinguish the Syrian fire on the basis of dialogue and opposition to foreign military intervention. Iran had perhaps bought into the illusion that Mursi's position is an opportunity to push the two other partners in this proposed contact group into a corner, i.e. Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But we can say that Mursi has surprised his inviters greatly when he dropped his bomb. It is no simple matter for the president of post-revolutionary Egypt to stand in Tehran and say that what is happening in Syria is a revolution against the oppression of an unjust regime, and one that has lost its legitimacy and that, therefore, standing by the Syrian people is a “moral imperative". It was no simple matter either for him to have said, “The Palestinian and Syrian peoples want freedom, dignity and justice". Linking the two has a painful sound to it for Tehran and Damascus. It was not surprising that the Syrian delegation left the hall in protest. And it was not strange that Minister Walid Muallem considered Mursi's statement “an incitement to continued bloodshed in Syria". Mursi's bomb has struck the attempt of the Syrian regime to push the theory of a foreign plot being carried out by armed gangs. The bomb was also an implicit condemnation of the Iranian position on the Syrian crisis. Mursi's speech revealed Egypt's current position on the ongoing slaughter in Syria. It also revealed that restoring Iranian-Egyptian relations will not be easy. Mursi snatched the lights and ruined the party for the resistance axis. As for Nouri al-Maliki, he chose to stay away from the bombs. He launched an initiative that he knows will not please the regime or relieve the opposition.
