Hooman Majd breaks down Iran's relationships across the Arab world: its tight alliance with Syria and Lebanon, Sunni Arab fears of Shiite expansion dating to the Iran-Iraq war, and diplomatic swings from Khatami's outreach to Ahmadinejad's confrontation. A street named after Sadat's assassin still poisons Iran-Egypt ties.
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Well, Syria-Lebanon is very good. Syria is a very close ally. It's the only Arab country that supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War all the way back in 1980. Its relations with other Arab countries is— ebbs and flows. It can be very good at times, it can be very bad at times. Right now it's not very good with Egypt, it's not very good with Bahrain. There was a bit of a problem recently because a former official in Iran claimed Bahrain as part of Iranian territory. Morocco just broke off relations with Iran. A lot of the Sunni countries in the region have been, for 30 years, they've been very wary of this a powerful Shiite country. In the early days of the revolution, one of the reasons Saddam Hussein invaded with the support of all the Arab countries and with the money given to him by the Arab countries invaded Iran was the idea of let's, you know, let's clamp down on this Islamic revolution because it's a dangerous thing. These people could come into our country or, you know, they could stir up trouble amongst the Shiites. I mean, Saudi Arabia has 3 million Shiites, for example, who are an underclass in Saudi Arabia. So there's a wariness of Iranian power, partly because they're not Arab. It's the Persian Empire. They have a long history. It's the only country in the region, only nation in the region that's been a country for longer than 100 years as a nation state. So there's wariness, but Iran has made efforts in the past under President Rafsanjani and then following that after, under President Khatami, there was a great effort to mend relations with Saudi Arabia, with a lot of other countries. In the region, and they were successful in that. Under Ahmadinejad, it's been a little bit bumpier, I would say. Egypt is a specific problem going all the way back to the Shah being admitted to Egypt by Anwar Sadat, the assassination of Anwar Sadat. There's this major boulevard in Tehran named after Anwar Sadat's assassin. There's a billboard of him as a martyr hero. The Egyptians have always said you have to, you know, change the name of that street. The Iranians at one point said, okay, we will, but it's still still there, the name of the street, and you know, my cousin's office there. I go there all the time. Those are little issues that are problematic for the Egyptians, and they feel like the Iranians are, you know, supporting anti-Egyptian forces throughout the region. And, you know, Egypt is an important Arab country. Now that said, there are, you know, Ali Larijani, who is the Speaker of Parliament, went to Egypt last year. Khatami has been to Egypt. There have been efforts to fix the problem of the relations between Egypt and Iran. Saudi Arabia, the same thing. Whenever there's a problem, you know, somebody goes to Saudi Arabia or the Saudi foreign minister comes to Iran. So they're trying to work it out, but in general, there's a wariness among the Arab populations— Arab leadership, sorry, in the region, a wariness of the Iranian leadership and the power that Iran has. Is it a model for other countries? I mean, I would say it might be a model for Iraq to some degree. Iraq doesn't want to have what's called the veliyyat-e-faqih, which means the rule of the jurisprudent, which is the supreme leader. They have their supreme leader. They don't call him a supreme leader. It's Ayatollah Sistani, who is the most senior cleric, almost the most senior cleric in all of Islam perhaps, in all of Shiite Islam, who the government of Iraq will never do anything that he's against. So he is in a way a supreme leader, but he doesn't get involved in politics generally. But so they'll, you know, prime minister of Iraq, the president of Iraq will go and see Ayatollah Sistani who lives in Najaf and kind of get his blessing for elections, for this and that. Iraq may be as a Shiite country, well, it will be a majority Shiite country anyway, and if you if you leave aside Kurdistan, it'll be a majority Shiite country, could kind of look to Iran a little bit in terms of how they view Islam and how Islam is able to be— I mean, Iraqis have actually traditionally been more fundamentalist than Iranians when it comes to Shia Islam, oddly enough. And, you know, there are things about, you know, liquor stores and being bombed and stuff like that. Well, of course, liquor stores don't exist in Iran, but everybody drinks. So maybe they could learn that. They don't have to make it so public. And everybody can just quietly drink.
