Anwar Sadat until 1989). The improved relations Egypt gained with the West through the Camp David Accords soon gave the country resilient economic growth. By 1980, however, Egypt's strained relations with the Arab World would result in a period of rapid inflation. The relationship between Iran and Egypt had fallen into open hostility during Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency. Following his death in 1970, President Sadat turned this around quickly into an open and close friendship. In 1971, Sadat addressed the Iranian parliament in Tehran in fluent Persian, describing the 2,500-year-old historic connection between the two lands. Overnight, the Egyptian and Iranian governments
Anwar Sadat were turned from bitter enemies into fast friends. The relationship between Cairo and Tehran became so friendly that the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, called Sadat his "dear brother". After the 1973 war with Israel, Iran assumed a leading role in cleaning up and reactivating the blocked Suez Canal with heavy investment. The country also facilitated the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Sinai Peninsula by promising to substitute the loss of the oil to the Israelis with free Iranian oil if they withdrew from the Egyptian oil wells in western Sinai. All these added more to the personal