TEHRAN, Iran — Once again, Egypt and Iran appear to be heading toward rapprochement, with increasingly converging views on Syria bringing the two regional powers closer together.
Tehran and Cairo have long followed a pattern of enthusiasm about normalizing ties only to see rapprochement remain a mirage. In December 2003, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held a groundbreaking meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami on the sidelines of a UN technology summit in Geneva. The meeting — the first between an Iranian and an Egyptian president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran — generated talk of rapprochement, but such a thing never occurred. More recently, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to Cairo in February 2013, a landmark visit in which he was greeted by his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Morsi on arrival — but again with no real subsequent warming of relations.
