A surge in high-level contacts between Egypt and Iran is fuelling speculation in Cairo about whether Egypt can use its soft power to ease tensions in the Red Sea.
This speculation comes against the backdrop of a spike in attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi group, which controls Yemeni capital Sana'a and most of northern Yemen, especially in Bab el-Mandeb Strait, near the southern entrance of the Red Sea.
The Iran-backed militia has staged a series of attacks against ships bound to Israeli ports, having seized one of these ships, in a sign of solidarity with the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, now reeling under an unending Israeli onslaught, in response to the 7 October attacks by Gaza-based factions, chiefly Hamas, on southern Israel.
Houthi attacks on ships crossing Bab el-Mandeb or travelling near the southern part of the Red Sea have raised international concern, and sent Western powers, especially the US, standing at the receiving end of oil shipments from the Arabian Gulf or products from Asia, especially India, scrambling to form an international naval coalition aiming at thwarting attacks in the region and bringing order back to an area, through which almost 12% of global trade, including 30% of global container traffic, passes.
Egypt, which commands the multinational Combined Task Force 153, widely known by the acronym CTF-153, a 34-member-state naval coalition formed to combat maritime security threats and provide capacity building in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden, has not joined the new US-led coalition, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian, in an apparent rejection of militarizing the Red Sea by far-flung countries.
Probably alluding to Egypt's rejection of the new coalition, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, said on 21 December that upholding the freedom of navigation and facilitating access to the Suez Canal was the responsibility of states bordering the Red Sea.
Red Sea security featured highly in talks between the Egyptian foreign minister and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi on 26 December, ones that apparently came as a literal translation of the Egyptian top diplomat's assertion that Red Sea security has to be handled by countries overlooking it.
Soft power playing out
The prospect of Egypt using diplomacy to induce Iran to lessen tensions in the Red Sea came hard on the heels of a flurry of communications with the Islamic Republic.
On 23 December, the leaders of Egypt and Iran discussed on the phone a wide range of topics, including the situation in Gaza.
The phone conversation between the Egyptian and Iranian leaders were their first since they met, for the first time too, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on the margins of the Arab-Islamic summit in November this year.
Two days later, Foreign Minister Shoukry discussed the war in Gaza and Egyptian efforts to bring about a ceasefire between the Palestinian territory's factions and Israel, during a conversation on the phone with his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amor-Abdollahian.
The talk in Cairo now is that Egypt can use its improving relations with Tehran in constricting tensions in the Red Sea, especially in the presence of purported links between the Islamic Republic and the Houthi group in Yemen.
"Iran can convince the Houthis to cut down tensions in the Red Sea, given the fact that the Islamic Republic will gain nothing by provoking Egypt which has a naval force guarding the Suez Canal, not so far away from Bab el-Mandeb Strait," Iranian affairs expert, Fekri Selim, told Al Majalla.
"Restoring relations with Egypt is a matter of utmost importance for the Islamic Republic. This is why it works hard to win over Cairo," he added.
He noted that Egypt and Iran need to change realities on the ground in a way that serves their own interests.
