Egypt’s President-elect Mohammad Mursi said he wanted to expand ties with Tehran to create a “strategic balance” in the region

Egypt's President-elect Mohammad Mursi said he wanted to expand ties with Tehran to create a “strategic balance” in the region.

In an interview with Iran's Fars news agency published on Monday, Mursi said that better relations with Tehran “will create a balance of pressure in the region, and this is part of my program.”

Diplomatic relations between the two countries have improved after being severed more than 30 years, thanks to the popular uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak last year.

Asked to comment on reports that, if elected, his first state visit would be to Saudi Arabia, Mursi said: "I didn't say such thing and until now my first international visits following my victory in the elections have not been determined".

Fars reporter in Cairo made the exclusive interview with Mursi minutes before his victory in the presidential elections was announced.

Mursi said he wants to "reconsider" the peace deal with the Zionist entity. “We will reconsider the Camp David Accord but through state institutions and the government,” Mursi said.

The Iranian foreign ministry congratulated in a statement issued on Sunday the Egyptian people and government on the election of Mursi.

Iran's armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi was quoted by IRNA on Monday as echoing the Muslim Brotherhood's rejection of moves by Egypt's military to dissolve the parliament and to give itself a greater say over government policy and the constitution. “The actions of the military council in Egypt, which considers itself to be selected by Mubarak, lack legal validity and political legitimacy,” Firouzabadi said.