Crowd attacks residence of Iranian diplomat in Egypt

A crowd of protesters has attacked the residence of Iran’s charge d’affaires to Egypt Mojtaba Amani in a suburb of the capital, Cairo, in protest at the warming relations between the two countries.

The crowd staged the protest in front of Amani’s residence on Friday and tried to scale the walls and break into the building, but was blocked by the police.

The protesters also attempted but failed to raise a flag of the militants in Syria over the building.

Amani said the crowd mostly comprised Salafi supporters as well as the supporters of the militants fighting in Syria. He added that they had been provoked to stage the protest by certain countries that are unhappy with the warming relations between Tehran and Cairo.

Iran severed its diplomatic ties with Egypt after the 1979 Islamic Revolution because Egypt had signed the Camp David Accords with the Israeli regime and offered asylum to Iran’s deposed monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Bilateral relations, however, have been on the mend following the 2011 Egyptian revolution that resulted in the ouster of the country’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

In August 2012, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi visited Iran to attend a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). It was the first visit of an Egyptian president to Iran in more than three decades.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also visited Egypt in February to attend the 12th summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as the first Iranian head of state to visit Egypt in 34 years.