Egypt accuses Iran of trying to dominate Mideast

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit lashed out at the Iranian government on Sunday, accusing the reginme of the Islamic Republic of trying to dominate the Middle East.

Abul Gheit's statement signaled an escalation in a simmering diplomatic dispute between the two countries, which have both vied for a dominant role in the region.

"The Iranians are trying to spread and impose their specific ideology on the region, and they are using some of the Palestinians... for Iranian purposes," he said, in an apparent reference to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

Earlier on Sunday, the foreign ministry rebuked former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani for criticizing Egypt's refusal to permanently open its Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Rafah is the only crossing into Gaza not controlled by Israel, which imposed a blockade on the impoverished Palestinian coastal strip after Hamas violently seized power there last year.

"Egypt's foreign policy will not play into the hands of Iran or the interests of some groups that have lost sight of the true objectives of the Palestinians," Abul Gheit said.

Egypt's foreign policy will not play into the hands of Iran or the interests of some groups that have lost sight of the true objectives of the Palestinians

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit

The two countries broke off diplomatic relations a year after Islamist revolutionaries overthrew the pro-Western Shah of Iran in 1979.

Iran opposed Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel and named a street in Tehran after the assassin of then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who was killed by an Egyptian Islamist militant in 1981.

Egypt closed down an Iranian television channel's Cairo bureau in July, accusing Al-Alam satellite channel of involvement in the production of a movie which negatively depicted Sadat.

First Vice-Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard, is scheduled to visit to Egypt in the near future, to participate in talks on easing the crisis in the Gaza Strip, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.