Iran has struggled to establish a coherent position on the Egyptian army’s ouster of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.

On one hand, Egypt under Morsi – along with the rest of the region’s Sunni powers – had aligned opposite Shiite Iran in the Syrian conflict. There are rumors that Morsi had become more active in urging jihadists to join the fight against Iran and its proxies in the country. Iranian clerics linked Morsi’s fall to “pro-Israeli, pro-U.S.” policies he was ostensibly pursuing.

Nonetheless the Islamic republic had been a consistent supporter of Morsi and his Muslim Broterhood-linked government. Tehran had in 2012 hailed the election of Morsi and the subsequent installment of his Muslim Brotherhood-linked government. Morsi had sought to expand Egyptian-Iranian ties, and relations had increased steadily throughout Morsi’s year in power. Iran officially condemned the army’s actions against the Islamist president.

Egyptian officials have had enough:

“The ministry strongly disapproves of repeated statements issued by Iranian officials, which reflect an insufficient grasp on the nature of the democratic developments Egypt is currently witnessing,” a spokesman for the foreign ministry stated Wednesday. “Such statements represent an unacceptable interference in Egypt’s internal affairs,” he added. The foreign ministry statement further called on the Islamist state to “focus on its own internal and external challenges instead of meddling in other countries’ internal issues.”

Morsi’s decline and fall is being viewed both regionally and by Western analysts as a failure for what Iran had declared to be aregional “Islamic awakening.”

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