It was perhaps the first royal wedding of its stature to have been filmed in the Middle East.
The year was 1939, when Princess Fawzia of Egypt tied the knot with Iran’s Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, interlocking the royal households of two of the Middle East’s most prominent nations in a strategic alliance.
Thousands of people had gathered for the event at Cairo’s Abdine Palace, where the wedding was marked with fireworks and a parade showcasing the two nations’ civilizations.
Princess Fawzia was the eldest sister of King Farouk I – Egypt’s last monarch – and was just 17 years old when she married Pahlavi, who two years later ascended to the throne and became Shah of Iran. Fawzia filed for divorce in 1945, and the divorce was recognized by Tehran in 1948.
Forty years after the wedding, Pahlavi was overthrown in an Islamic revolution that changed the course of Iranian relations with Arab states, and sent Iranian-Egyptian ties in particular on a downward spiral from which the two nations have never emerged.
The feud became the longest between Iran and an Arab country in modern times. But it may soon be coming to an end.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week publicly endorsed normalizing ties with Egypt, the most populous Arab country, saying that Iran “welcomes Egypt’s interest in restoring relations.”
“We have no problem in this regard,” he tweeted.
Source: cnn.com
