With noose tightening around Brotherhood, Iran becomes potential refuge

Mahmud Mohamadi

The Muslim Brotherhood started collapsing and the members of the group who had escaped from Egypt appear to be under siege.

This is particularly so with the latest handover by Kuwaiti authorities of a group of Egyptian Brotherhood members to Egypt.

Before this incident, Turkey repatriated Brotherhood operatives Mohamed Abdel Hafiz to Egypt in February 2019.

Several Brotherhood operatives were also deported from Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea.

The Brotherhood has started realizing that its members cannot be secure in these states anymore. This is why the Brotherhood tries to find a safe refuge for its members.

A group of Brotherhood activists has launched a social media campaign in which they call on Brotherhood members in Gulf states allied to Egypt to escape from these states.

The group has limited options. Egypt enjoys strong ties with Gulf states. It also has security and strategic cooperation with these countries at the highest level. Qatar, which sponsors and backs terrorism, is an exception of this rule, of course.

Turkey is also turning into a dangerous place for the affiliates of the Brotherhood, especially after the handover to Egypt of some Brotherhood members.

Iran is now the only option available for the Brotherhood members. Relations between the group and Tehran have always been good.

Strong links between the Brotherhood and Iran derive from the presence of similarities between the ideologies of the two sides. These similarities open the door wide for cooperation between them, especially when any of them needs help. The Brotherhood helped Iran’s mullahs when they reached power in Iran in 1979.

“Relations between Iran and the Brotherhood are very strong,” said Tarek al-Besheshi, a former senior member of the Brotherhood. “A large number of the members of the group will escape to Iran,” he told The Reference.

He said the Brotherhood will be one of the cards to be used by Iran in its showdown with Washington.

He expected Turkey and Qatar to transfer Brotherhood members to Iran in the light of an agreement with the mullahs of Iran.

Beginnings

Everybody can easily notice similarities between the structures of both Iran and the Brotherhood. The supreme leader of the Brotherhood controls all the members of the group. The supreme leader of the Iranian revolution also controls everything in Iran.

Relations between Iran and the Brotherhood started in the 1940s when Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna met a host of Iranian leaders, according to late Brotherhood supreme guide Umar al-Tilmisani. He said Banna met the same leaders several times with the aim of finding a common ground between the different schools of thought in Islam.

Saudi political analyst Khalid al-Zaatar said a Muslim Brotherhood delegation had visited Iran soon after the Islamic Revolution in the country in 1979.

“This was when the members of the Brotherhood delegation told the supreme leader of the Iranian Revolution that the Brotherhood would continue to be at the service of the revolution,” Zaatar said.