Expanding Horizons: Iran's Strategic Engagements in Sub-Saharan Africa - Insights from South Africa, Nigeria, and Tanzania

Since the 1960s, both the regime of Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979) and, subsequently starting from 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran, have intervened in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While the Shah's policies were motivated by a virulent anti-communist stance, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) pursued a 'radical' policy of changing the political status of the Western world, including the Western Arab allies, who were hostile to the survival of the mullah regime. While the Shah focused on geopolitical interests, particularly in the Horn of Africa, the vital sea route to the Red Sea, and in South Africa, and ignored the interests of African Muslims, the IRI exploited increasingly radicalized Islamists to expand Iranian influence on the continent. For example, the IRI has spent billions of dollars in the region to provide Muslim schools and free social services through hospitals and orphanages supported by the Iranian Red Crescent. The IRI's strategy aimed to build grassroots support among Muslim communities rather than focusing exclusively on African governments. Tehran's expansionist policies included arms sales to state and non-state actors and the destabilization of regimes. The goal was to build partnerships that would help evade international sanctions while opening new terrain for its axis of resistance against its global and regional adversaries, particularly its arch-enemy Israel. Tehran's version of political Islam involved building up proxies, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels, most recently in Yemen, who have wreaked havoc on international shipping lanes in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Tehran expanded its influence in the Sahel region, taking advantage of self-serving French Africa policy and the policies of other Western powers in West Africa to establish contacts with the anti-Western ASE military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Russia, China and Turkey paved the way for this new alignment. The rivalry between Iran and Israel has intensified in recent decades, with several confrontations between the two countries in the Red Sea and East Africa since the 2010s. Iran has continuously expanded its engagement throughout the region, leading to a ‘balance of deterrence’ between the two countries.