The following article by Amir Abbas Fakhravar, research fellow for IWP’s Center for Culture and Security, and G. William Heiser appeared on Real Clear Religion on July 10, 2013.
Four days after the events that ended Mohammed Morsi’s presidency on July 3, 2013, the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry finally announced the regime’s official stance on this development. “We do not consider proper the intervention by military forces in politics to replace a democratically elected administration,” said Ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi.
The Islamic Republic ruling class was at first elated when Morsi was elected president and was hoping that a Muslim Brotherhood member would help establish political and economic ties with Egypt that had been all but non-existent since the advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979. They praised the “Arab Spring” and even Supreme Leader Khamenei claimed that it was inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. While all overtures were being turned down by Cairo, the surprising acceptance of Morsi to attend the Non-Aligned Summit Movement in Tehran in August 2012 once again raised the hopes of the officials in Tehran and became the leading news story in the Iranian media. Morsi, in his one-day trip to Tehran, shocked his hosts in his speech at the opening session of the summit. Ironically, he spoke of the struggle for freedom by the Palestinian and Syrian peoples and said that the Assad regime had lost all legitimacy.