CAIRO — Ever since 1979, when Iran cut off ties with Egypt following President Anwar Sadat's signing of a peace treaty with Israel, each country has maintained separate strategies, nexuses and allies. However, changes in the Middle East over the past three years have forced both parties to consider new strategies to solve their long list of problems, which stand as obstacles to the development of relations between the two.

Perhaps the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) as a common enemy and a real threat to both countries has stirred the stagnant waters. Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iranian foreign minister and adviser to the supreme leader, expressed this idea during his meeting with an Egyptian media delegation in Tehran. "The Middle East without Egypt is nothing, because the vacuum left by Egypt when it is absent cannot be filled by any other state," he said. This explicit political courting of the Egyptian side sparked the curiosity of the media and political analysts alike.

Al-Monitor spoke with Ahmed al-Ghamrawi, former assistant to the foreign minister and current head of the Egyptian-Iranian Friendship Association. He said that IS is an American construct — the offspring of US policies to use extremist Islamist groups to strike communism at its base. Yet, according to him, the "magic turned on the magician" as these groups began to pose a real threat to the US presence, thus provoking a change in American strategy.

"In its capacity as a major player in world politics, the United States has opposed any Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement because it does not serve its interests. Decisions were, in fact, drafted to restore full Egyptian-Iranian relations during the time of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. [These decisions] were to be announced in Cairo and Tehran simultaneously. However, the American side put pressure on Mubarak and this was halted," Ghamrawi said.