Iran foreign minister visits Egypt as leaders try to contain regional war

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Iran’s foreign minister has met Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the first visit to Cairo by an official from the Islamic republic in more than a decade, as diplomats step up efforts to avoid a wider regional war. 

Abbas Araghchi’s meeting with Sisi on Thursday included discussions on brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, according to Egypt’s foreign ministry.

The diplomatic push comes as Israel said it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadly October 7 attack on Israel, during an operation In Gaza. The Palestinian militant group has not confirmed Sinwar’s death.

Israel’s war against Hamas has already spilled over from the shattered enclave into an invasion of Lebanon to target Iran-backed Hizbollah militants. The Middle East is braced for an Israeli response to Iran’s barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles earlier this month, which came after Israel killed Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive air strike on Beirut late last month. 

Araghchi’s Cairo meeting followed overnight strikes by US stealth bombers against targets in Yemen, aiming to reduce threats to shipping from Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea. 

Majority Shia Muslim Iran has a turbulent relationship with Sunni- dominated Arab states such as Egypt, which have long accused Tehran of destabilising the region through proxy forces, including Hizbollah militants and Houthi rebels. Hizbollah is regarded as Iran’s most powerful regional proxy force.

Although Cairo and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran’s former president Ebrahim Raisi met Sisi in Riyadh in 2023.

Arab countries, particularly the oil-rich Gulf states, have moved to reduce tensions with arch-rival Tehran in recent years. Araghchi’s stop in Egypt is his eighth in a regional tour including Saudi Arabia, as Iranian diplomats have urged Gulf states to stay “neutral” as tensions increase in the Middle East.

A funeral procession was held in Iran’s Isfahan on Thursday for Abbas Nilforoushan, a senior Iranian commander killed alongside Nasrallah.

“We hit you so that you know we will strike you in your territory. The message for you was not to rely on your anti-missile shield because we will penetrate your defences,” said Major General Hossein Salami, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ top commander. “If you commit another mistake and strike our targets . . . we will strike back painfully.”

The Houthis have not commented on the US strikes in Yemen but have said their attempts to disrupt global shipping are in support of Palestinians in Gaza. Yemeni media said the strikes had hit the cities of Sana’a and Saada. 

The US military said that using “the B-2 bomber demonstrates US global strike capabilities to reach these targets, when necessary, anytime, anywhere”, in what analysts perceived as a pointed message to Iran ahead of an expected Israeli retaliation. 

Israeli jets continued to strike south Lebanon, a day after IDF footage showed Israeli troops blowing up a village containing a historic shrine while detonating a Hizbollah tunnel network that it said “was embedded in the heart of a town, beneath the homes of Lebanese civilians”. 

Hizbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah claimed on Thursday that Israeli troops had not succeeded in capturing any villages in south Lebanon, Reuters reported. But he added the militant group was working with Lebanese parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri to secure a ceasefire with Israel. 

Additional reporting by Steff Chavez in Washington