Iran is trying to “dominate the Middle East” from Kabul to Casablanca.
Egypt views Iran as its number one strategic threat according to a recently leaked cable dated April 28, 2009.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that he sees “Iranian influence spreading like a cancer from the gcc [Gulf Cooperation Council countries] to Morocco,” according to the cable.
“President Mubarak has made it clear that he sees Iran as Egypt’s—and the region’s—primary strategic threat,” the cable said. “His already dangerous neighborhood, he has stressed, has only become more so since the fall of Saddam, who, as nasty as he was, nevertheless stood as a wall against Iran, according to Mubarak. He now sees Tehran’s hand moving with ease throughout the region, ‘from the Gulf to Morocco,’ as he told a recent congressional delegation.”
“The immediate threat to Egypt comes from Iranian conspiracies with Hamas (which he sees as the ‘offspring’ of his own most dangerous internal political threat, the Muslim Brotherhood) to stir up unrest in Gaza, but he is also concerned about Iranian machinations in Sudan and their efforts to create havoc elsewhere in the region, including in Lebanon via Hezbollah,” says the cable. “While Tehran’s nuclear threat is also a cause for concern, Mubarak is more urgently seized with what he sees as the rise of pan-Shiism and Iranian attempts to dominate the Middle East.”
Egypt, says the cable, “remains concerned with Iranian efforts to interfere in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan, and Egypt views the recently dismantled Sinai Hezbollah cell as an unacceptable Iranian escalation.”
Confirming Mubarak’s statements, intelligence officials have warned that Iran is releasing al Qaeda terrorists from prison so they can fight nato in Afghanistan, according to the Times of London, December 24.
Reports have also surfaced that an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was captured in Afghanistan on December 18. However, nato said it was mistaken and that the “Taliban weapons facilitator” was not a member of the al-Quds force. There are earlier reports, however, of Iran smuggling weapons into Afghanistan.
Mubarak is clearly right in believing that Iran aims to “dominate the Middle East.” It already has a lot of influence in Iraq and Lebanon.
