Iran top diplomat to attend Egypt president’s inauguration

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has headed to Egypt to attend the inauguration ceremony of the country’s President-elect Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Amir-Abdollahian left Tehran for Cairo on Sunday morning upon the official invitation of the Egyptian interim government.

Last week, Egypt’s representative in Tehran met with Mohammad Nahavandian, chief of staff of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and submitted the official invitation of interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour to his Iranian counterpart.

Representatives of 56 countries will attend the Sunday ceremony at the general assembly of the Supreme Constitutional Court.

Egypt’s election commission on June 3 officially declared Sisi, the former head of Egypt’s armed forces, as the winner of the May 26-28 election with over 90 percent of the votes.

The election came nearly one year after Sisi led the ouster of, Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically-elected president, in July 2013.

The Muslim Brotherhood movement and pro-democracy groups boycotted the election, a move that apparently led to a lower turnout than the election that brought Morsi to power in 2012.