DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, 29 May: Iran\u2019s supreme leader said Monday he\u2019d \u201cwelcome\u201d the restoration of full diplomatic ties between Egypt and the Islamic Republic, raising the prospect of Cairo and Tehran normalizing relations after decades of strain.
\nThe comments by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came as a series of websites linked to Iran\u2019s presidency bore the images of two leaders of an exiled opposition group Monday, with others showing the pictures of Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi crossed out.
\nIranian state television quoted Khamenei\u2019s comments as coming from a meeting he held with the visiting sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq. Sultan Haitham\u2019s trip to Tehran, his first since assuming power in 2020, comes as Muscat long has served as an interlocutor between Tehran and the West.
\nThere have been growing signs of Egypt and Iran potentially restoring ties, particularly as Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a d\u00e9tente in March with Chinese mediation after years of tensions. Cairo relies on Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf Arab states for economic support.
\n\u201cWe welcome this issue and have no problem in this regard,\u201d Khamenei reportedly said.
\nThere was no immediate reaction from Egypt to Khamenei\u2019s comments. Officials in Cairo did not respond to a request for comment.
\nEgypt under Anwar Sadat cut ties to Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Sadat had been a close friend to the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, welcomed him to Egypt just before his death and hosted his state funeral in 1980. The shah\u2019s remains are entombed at Cairo\u2019s Al-Rifai Mosque. Egypt\u2019s peace deal with Israel also angered Iran\u2019s theocratic government, which views Israel as its top regional enemy.
\nAfter the 2011 Arab Spring and the election of President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, relations warmed with Iran. However, a 2013 military overthrow ousted Morsi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi took power, immediately cooling the outreach to Tehran.
\nMeanwhile Monday, an internet account describing itself as a group of hackers claimed responsibility for defacing websites associated with Iran\u2019s presidency. The account GhyamSarnegouni, whose name in Farsi means \u201cRise to Overthrow,\u201d previously claimed hacking websites associated with Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry earlier this month.
\nIranian state media and officials did not immediately acknowledge the apparent hack. AP<\/p>\n
However, Associated Press journalists accessing the sites found them defaced with images of Massoud Rajavi, the long-missing leader of the Iranian exile group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, and his wife Maryam, who is now the public face of the group.
\nOne site bore the slogan: \u201cDeath to Khamenei Raisi- Hail to Rajavi.\u201d Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran\u2019s president Ebrahim Raisi both were targeted similarly in the previously claimed hacked in May.
\nIran has been targeted by a series of embarrassing hacks amid the rising tensions over its rapidly advancing nuclear program. That\u2019s included the signal of Iranian state television being targeted, gasoline pumps that provide subsidized fuel being targeted in a cyberattack and government surveillance camera imagery being released, including from a notorious prison.
\nThe Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, known by the acronym MEK, called the hack \u201cvery extensive\u201d when reached, but did not claim credit for it. The MEK had angrily condemned a prisoner swap Belgium conducted with Iran on Friday to free an aid worker that saw an Iranian diplomat convicted of being behind a bomb plot targeting the group released.
\nThe MEK began as a Marxist group opposing the shah\u2019s rule. It claimed and was suspected in a series of attacks against U.S. officials in Iran in the 1970s, something the group now denies.
\nIt supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but soon had a falling out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and turned against the cleric. It carried out a series of assassinations and bombings targeting the young Islamic Republic.
\nThe MEK later fled into Iraq and backed dictator Saddam Hussein during his bloody eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s. That saw many oppose the group in Iran. Although largely based in Albania, the group claims to operate a network inside Iran. AP<\/p>\n
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, 29 May: Iran\u2019s supreme leader said Monday he\u2019d \u201cwelcome\u201d the restoration of full diplomatic ties between Egypt and the Islamic Republic, raising the prospect of Cairo and Tehran normalizing relations after decades of strain. The comments by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came as a series of websites linked to Iran\u2019s presidency bore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-217233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}