The Brotherhood and Iran.. Decades of mutual friendliness and joint conspiracy
English - Sunday 31 July 2022 الساعة 09:07 am
Sana'a, NewsYemen, Muhammad Yahya:
The relationship between the Brotherhood and Iran has historical roots, since the establishment of this group in 1928, reinforced by mutual visits, and the meetings that brought together the first guide of the group, Hassan al-Banna, and between Shiite clerics and mullahs such as: Taqi al-Qummi, Ayatollah Kashani, Nawab Safavi, and Ayatollah Khomeini.
In the late 1930s, Seyyed Ruhollah Mustafa al-Moussawi Khomeini, who later became Imam, Ayatollah Khomeini, visited the main headquarters of the Brotherhood in Egypt. Where he held a private meeting with the guide Hassan al-Banna, who later had long and extended secret relations with the leader of the Khomeinist revolution.
Years later, the visit of the founder of the extremist Iranian “Fedayan Islam” movement, “Nawab Safavi,” to Sayyid Qutb in Cairo in 1945, demonstrated the extent of the early rapprochement between the Brotherhood’s projects and the leaders of the Khomeinist revolution.
The strong relationship at the political and intellectual levels contributed to integrating the Brotherhood into the Iranian project that they defend, in addition to the intellectual exchanges between the two parties, especially after Ali Khamenei’s translation of Sayyid Qutb’s books “The Future for This Religion” and “Islam and the Problems of Civilization” into Persian, and the admiration of the mullahs. Iranians and the principle of governance.
The Brotherhood was the first to cheer after the success of the Khomeinist revolution in the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979. And the arrival of the velayat-e faqih regime to power in Iran, and they were the first to congratulate the Iranian guide, Ayatollah Khomeini, on his arrival to power. Where the group saw in Khomeini's approach to managing the revolution and reaching power as a model that can be started and followed.
In turn, Khomeini had reproduced his political success, from the translations of the books of Hassan al-Banna and his student Sayyid Qutb, to revolutionize the Shah, penetrate into the structure of the state, and then establish the Revolutionary Guard, which is the basic idea of the founder of the Brotherhood.
Before the Khomeinist revolution, the Brotherhood used to talk about the necessity of establishing an Islamic state, and its literature is full of theories about the shape of society and the state under governance. The emergence of the Islamic state in Iran was a model for the group to follow.
After the Khomeinist revolution, the Iranian regime recognized the "Islamic Call and Reform Group", the Brotherhood's branch in Iran, and the group became active in political work, and it gained a popular presence in the Iranian Sunni community.
The current Iranian guide, Ali Khamenei, revealed the size of the close relationship between the Brotherhood and Iran, in a symposium on "the religious seminary and the Islamic awakening," where he stressed that "the Brotherhood is the closest to Tehran among all Islamic groups."
Khamenei, too, had delivered a speech in 2011. For the first time in Arabic. In it, he urged the Egyptian demonstrators to follow the example of Egyptian figures such as Al-Banna and Qutb, whose books were based on the thought of jihad, terrorism and coups against the government. After the group came to power in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi became the first Egyptian president to visit Iran since the rise of the Wilayat al-Faqih regime.
Before that, in the eighties of the last century, during the Iran-Iraq war, the Brotherhood sided with Iran, and the Brotherhood later showed its support for Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, and that was the same position as Iran.
With the start of the 2015 Decisive Storm in Yemen. With the support of the Arab Alliance. In defense of the legitimacy of the Yemeni authority from the Houthi coup plotters, and to prevent Iran from controlling the most important international waterway in Bab al-Mandab, the Islah party “Brotherhood Branch in Yemen” showed a vacillating position on the Decisive Storm, and its support was in the media, while on the ground, the Brotherhood failed to confront Iranian expansion In northern Yemen, the Houthis crossed the tails of Tehran, and the Brotherhood allowed the militia to expand in all the northern governorates. And they supported its expansion to the southern provinces. This confirmed the depth of the relationship between the Islah Party and the Houthis. Which is a reflection of the strong relationship between the Brotherhood and Iran.
In 2019, the American magazine "The Intercept" revealed. About a meeting held in Turkey in 2014, between the Brotherhood’s Deputy Supreme Guide Ibrahim Mounir and officials in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, represented by the Quds Force, and the content of the meeting was to target Saudi Arabia and try to exhaust it by working with the Houthis and the Brotherhood in Yemen.
Years before that, and in his interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper “Al-Seyassah” on November 23, 2002, the late Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz had described the Brotherhood as “the root of the affliction” and that “all our problems and secretions came from the Brotherhood.” The Muslims, they are the ones who created these currents and spread these ideas.” He added: “When the (Brotherhood) was persecuted and the gallows were hung for them, they resorted to Saudi Arabia, which bore them, preserved their sanctuaries and made them safe.”
