Over the past couple of years, Dr. Mustafa El-Labbad has become a familiar face to Arab news-channel junkies through his clear, unbiased insight into Iranian politics and Egyptian–Iranian relations. This month, he is launching Al-Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies, which is dedicated to researching Iran, Turkey, and Central Asia. Given the ramifications of the American occupation of Iraq, the analyst believes that there has never been a better time to focus on this slice of the region.

El-Labbad says two things make Al-Sharq Center unique: It is specialized and it is independent — concepts that are new to Egypt. “Centers that cater to everybody and study everything no longer exist in the Western hemisphere,” he explains. “Thinktanks have to be specialized in a certain topic, like the environment, for example, or a geographical region, like us here. Egypt has not caught on to this concept yet. Al-Ahram Center for [Political and] Strategic Studies, for example, has a unit that provides research into the Gulf, but it is just a unit in a center.”

During a mid-October visit to the Sharq’s Giza headquarters, workers were still scraping floors and painting, but El-Labbad determinedly pointed out that the center is on track to open in early November. “I believe you should just jump in and start. What is there to wait for?” he asks.

A young academic who started out as a journalist with the state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA), El-Labbad went on to study in Germany, where he received a doctorate in political economics and a master’s degree in German translation. “So far, we have been providing our services as official translators from German to Arabic. It was one way to seek the funds to start the center,” he says. “But I am hoping that in the future, the translating work will become marginal, and we will channel the bulk of our effort into providing research on Iran, Turkey and Central Asia.”

El-Labbad is hoping that as the only specialized center on Central Asia, Al-Sharq will be a pioneer to be followed by many. “It is important to have competition. It means more people will do research, which is a positive thing. We can feed scholars and the media with accurate information. We can also cater to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to decision makers in all fields. It is important for these people to find the information upon which to base decisions.”

The center, according to El-Labbad, has its work cut out for it. “I believe it is important for the country to have many specialists and experts,” he says. “Egypt’s prestige among other Arab countries is derived from its experts, artists and intellectuals. If we did not have those, Egypt’s image would be worse than it is at the moment. Saudi Arabia, which is a much wealthier country, lacks this image.”

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So far, the red tape has been fairly easy to cut through, and the center has already received its license from the government as a private company. “So when you ask about challenges, no, we have no problems with the government because of the nature of our center,” El-Labbad says. “But we are not getting any help, either. We have no source of funding. I have been using my own money, but I am optimistic and I am certain Egyptian businessmen are going to fund me. I do not want to seek foreign funding.”

The words ‘foreign funding’ have become a stigma among Egyptian intellectuals, used to derogate an opponent’s opinions and even research. But the question is why businessmen would be interested in funding an independent research center.

“They would fund us because it will be for their own benefit, if they import or export from and to Iran or Turkey or any of the countries falling in our geographical area of study. Businessmen must be aware of the variants in the area they are doing business with,” El-Labbad points out. “We are planning to put out our own products, but businessmen can commission a specific study on a certain field. We are affiliated with similar centers in Iran and Turkey, and are planning to set up partnerships with them. In order to be able to compete, we must learn to base work upon knowledge.”

El-Labbad, a recognized specialist on Iranian and Turkish affairs both in North America and Europe, is hoping to breed a generation of researchers through his center, something he learned from his own mentor, the late historian Dr. Raouf Abbass. El-Labbad is planning to name Al-Sharq Center’s main hall and library after his late professor.

Although at press time Al-Sharq Center had not yet officially launched, El-Labbad and his team of researchers have already put out a number of issues of the center’s periodical, Al-Sharqnama. El-Labbad also has one best-selling book under his belt, Gardens of Sorrow, which is the only Arabic book about the controversial and often misunderstood concept of Wilayet Al-Faqih, the Iranian model of governance. The term loosely translates as “guardianship of the Islamic jurists.”

“Unfortunately, [the Lebanese Druze leader] Walid Jumblatt is presenting the book to all his visitors. He gave it to Amr Moussa during the [Arab League] secretary-general’s last visit,” El-Labbad says, adding that the concept of Wilayet Al-Faqih, which places power in the hands of religious leaders, is what attackers of the Iranian influence in the region use to scare advocates of Iran, or at least Iranian policies. “I say unfortunately because my personal views are against the camp of March 14 [who are against Hizbollah]. Professionally, on the other hand, I believe there are no angels or devils in politics.”

El-Labbad believes that on the political level, Iran and Syria have won the battle since 2005. “Whoever says they have not is judging through his or her ideology. As for the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon, things are not so clear. Of course it is a big deal that Hizbollah was able to stand strong and until today has not given up its arms. It did not compromise, except concerning the north of the Litani River. It was more of a moral victory. Sayyed Hassan [Nasrallah] did not free Palestine, nor did he claim he could.

“But those who say that he is the only one who scored a victory over Israel are wrong. Militarily, 2006 was not a victory, but politically it was. I see that the [pro-Syrian, pro-Hizbollah] March 8 people have better political acumen, while the other camp has a lot of money that they can give away to make writers do their bidding.”

On the Egyptian front, the country’s diplomatic relations with Iran have been at the forefront of the news repeatedly in the past few months. A furor arose over the summer with the release of Assassination of a Pharaoh, a film maligning Sadat and allegedly produced by Iran (as it turned out, the film was not an official Iranian production but merely had Persian subtitles in one of its versions). Tensions resurfaced in September after the Egyptian Sheikh Yussef El-Qaradawi, the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, spoke about “negative” Shi’a influences in the region. Both storms have since settled down.

Yet the fact remains, El-Labbad notes, that Egypt is the only Arab country with no official diplomatic relations with Iran. According to El-Labbad, there are no phone ties, either, so a person cannot just pick up the phone and call Tehran, for example.

“It has to be said that Iran started by suspending its diplomatic relations with Egypt following the Camp David agreement. But in the past eight years, the Iranians have shown interest in resuming these relations,” he notes. “I travel to Iran once or twice every year and have been informed by research centers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this wish. They care about resuming relations with Egypt because Egypt is the gate to the rest of the Arab region. Relations with Egypt would validate the new reality — that Iran is an influential country.”

During the 1980s, Egypt and many Arab countries supported Iraq’s war against Iran. Saddam Hussein propagated the idea that Iraq was the only barrier in the face of a spreading Persian and Shi’a influence in the Arab region.

“When the war between Iraq and Iran ended in 1988, Iraq had realized a semi-victory,” El-Labbad says. “But after the American floundering in the region and their occupation of Iraq in 2003, the results of the [Iran-Iraq] war were changed into an unprecedented and complete political victory for Iran, because Iran’s allies in Iraq took over the reigns of power. What the Iranians failed to do through arms, they achieved at the hands of the Americans and with America’s own weapons. For the first time since the founding of the Iraqi republic in 1921, Iran’s allies are the ones in power.”

The American occupation of Iraq has shifted the balance of power, creating a new reality that Arab regimes have to deal with. “Egypt has to note this new reality, whether we like it or not. Iran’s regional role is a big one,” El-Labbad explains. “Add to that Iran’s alliance with Assad of Syria and with Hizbollah and Hamas. It means that the Iranian influence in the Arab east is the strongest since the year 2340 BC [the year an ancient Persian ruler created an empire spanning the Middle East]. Of course this raises sensitivities with Egypt.”

So while Egypt was once one among only three powerful countries (Saudi Arabia and Israel being the other two), Iran and Turkey have now joined the equation. “Iraq’s geography has dictated this new equation. When it fell, it allowed these new players to come in,” El-Labbad says. “Each country may try to use propaganda to promote itself, but the main determining factor remains the country’s regional role and how influential it is. Egypt, Iran and Turkey are important countries and must play a role in the region. If they do not, this is an indication of something wrong going on internally.”

Historically, the expert explains, Egypt played the strongest role in the region during the time of Nasser, and even before during the time of Mohamed Ali Pasha. “Even King Farouk tried to play this role and married his sister off to the Shah of Iran. It is the fate of any Egyptian ruler, because of Egypt’s geographical position and because of the Nile and the country’s limited resources. It is the same for the Iranians.”

To validate his power, the Shah of Iran became the primary protector of American interests in the region. This stopped following the 1979 revolution, which saw Iran declared as an Islamic republic. With the American occupation of Iraq, things have changed yet again, but not in ways one might assume.

“For the first time in its history, Iran is perceived as the force against the US imperialist claims in the region. It supports Hassan Nasrallah, and it is against Israel,” El-Labbad says.

“But what people fail to see is that it is also the godfather of the occupation government in Iraq,” he continues. “We must learn to remove the religious or sacred away from politics. Politics is by nature worldly and sullied. Iranians are merely playing a political game, and I cannot say they are angels or devils. They are working for their own interests. They are great bargainers, and they can make the American mission in the region so much easier. It is wrong to see them as holders of an ideological crusade against the West, unlike Nasser, for example. They want to sell, but on their own terms.” et