Iran's Scramble for Sub-Saharan Africa.

• Author: Lefebvre, Jeffrey A.
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

Tehran's attempt to extend Iranian influence in sub-Saharan Africa dates back more than forty years. (1) Iran's capacity to influence events in the region to pursue Iranian political, strategic, economic, and/or ideological objectives can be attributed in large part to the increase in Iranian oil revenues at the beginning of the 1970s and was bolstered by the dramatic (almost fourfold) increase in the price of oil following the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. In short, Iranian oil revenues have encouraged and allowed Tehran, under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979) and since 1979 as the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), to intervene in sub-Saharan African affairs. One striking difference to note: The Shah's activities seemed to be motivated largely by a 'defensive' containment posture to maintain the political status quo in the region versus the more 'offensive' or disruptive goals of the Islamic Republic.

Iranian policy toward sub-Saharan Africa under the Shah focused mainly on South Africa along with Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. With respect to South Africa, Iranian oil sales were justified and motivated--not only economically--but strategically as well: to help prop-up and support South Africa's staunchly anti-communist apartheid regime. Containment of radicalism and communism in northeast Africa would also underlie the Shahs support for the pro-Western regime of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and then Somalia following Mogadishu's break with Moscow in 1977. In the case of the Horn, the Shah's 'defensive' anti-radical/communist containment policy led Iran to supply weapons and provide political support to Mogadishu during the 1977-1978 Ogaden War between the Soviet/Cuban-backed Ethiopian regime and Somalia.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has adopted a more offensive' or disruptive foreign policy designed to alter a political status quo deemed hostile to the survival of the IRI. Tehran's focus on expanding its influence in sub-Saharan Africa derives from a desire to break out from its political isolation in the Middle East and internationally. Some political leaders and commentators have warned for years of the IRI's plan to create a 'Shia crescent' running from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. (2) Others have raised the alarm about what they see as Tehran's greater ambition to create an Islamic crescent extending from Iran into sub-Saharan Africa. (3) Paradoxically the IRI's 'offensive' foreign policy stems from a sense of insecurity (not unreasonable given Western and Arab support for Baghdad during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq Wars, past and current international sanctions on Iran, and frequent talk of supporting regime change in Tehran) not from a position of power.

Iran's policies in sub-Saharan Africa have been driven through the years by a variety of interests that have varied from the days of the Shah's regime to the current Islamic Republic. But even over the past forty years that the Islamic Republic has existed, the intensity and nature of the IRI's policies in the region have changed and not remained static. Besides the impact of Iranian domestic politics (especially the regime change in 1979 from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic), regional and international conflicts have also shaped Iran's policies. To understand Iran's scramble to secure its interests in sub-Saharan Africa and the role that this region of the world has and will play in Tehran's national security calculation four major periods will be examined in this analysis: i) the Shah and containment, 1953-1979; ii) the Islamic Republic's diplomatic 'offensive,' 1980-2001; iii) the IRI seeking to 'escape' international isolation, 2002-2010; and iv) the Saudi-Iranian Cold War, 2011-2018.

The Shah of Iran and the Containment of Radicalism, 1953-1978

The Shah of Iran developed a political-strategic interest in the Horn of Africa in the latter half of the 1950s owing to the perceived threat posed by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser to the regional order in the Middle East. Nasser's pan-Arab policy and popularity among the Arab masses grew exponentially in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez crisis and war. The Suez crisis reached its critical stage when in July 1956 Nasser ordered the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Although Egypt was defeated militarily by the combined British, French, and Israeli invasion forces Nasser claimed political victory by not backing down to Israel and the Western imperial powers. Under international pressure, the invading armies were forced to withdraw from Egypt and the Suez Canal was returned to Egyptian control.

In the aftermath of the Suez war Nasser sought to exploit his "hero" status in the Arab world to spread his 'radical' (disruptive) message of pan-Arabism (using a pan-Islam message when convenient) and anti-imperialism, throughout the greater Middle East region, including the Horn of Africa. In February 1958, Egypt formed a political union with Syria establishing the United Arab Republic (UAR). This development sparked the beginning of the so-called Arab Cold War (1958-1967). (4) In effect, the Arab world divided into two competing ideologically-opposed camps. Nasser led a group of radical or progressive Arab states that included the UAR, and subsequently was joined by Iraq after the July 1958 revolution that overthrew the pro-West Hashemite dynasty in Baghdad, and North Yemen following a September 1961 pro-Nasserite military coup deposed the Yemeni monarchy in Sanaa. More alarmingly, Nasser's ideology enjoyed widespread appeal amongst the Arab masses throughout the Middle East. Nasser's progressive camp favored a policy of non-alignment in the East-West Cold War and adamantly challenged the rule of the conservative, pro-Western monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Although not an Arab state, Iran became a target of Nasser owing to the Shah's strongly pro-West foreign policy, not to mention the fact that the Shah also governed a hereditary monarchy. Thus, under the Shah, Iran's regional foreign policy interests aligned with the conservative, pro-Western monarchical Arab regimes.

The Nasser 'threat' also extended southward into the Horn of Africa. In the case of the Horn, Nasser used pan-Islam to appeal to the millions of Muslims that lived in Ethiopia and Somalia. Nasser targeted the conservative, openly pro-Western Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie whose government signed an arms-for-bases military agreement with the United States in May 1953. (5) In exchange for millions of dollars' worth of annual U.S. military assistance, Ethiopia granted Washington basing rights for twenty-five years to establish a communications facility (Kagnew Station) located outside of Asmara, Eritrea-then under Ethiopian control as part of a 1952 UN-sponsored ten year federation plan between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Of concern to Nasser, this American communications facility was used to intercept communications and gather intelligence throughout the Middle East.

Nasser sought to keep Selassie on the defensive by using the 'Unity of the Valley of the Nile concept coupled with pan-Islam to rally the millions of Muslims living in the Horn of Africa to his side. Because of Egypt's dependence on the flow of the waters of the Nile River (approximately 90 percent of the Nile's waters are provided by the Blue Nile whose source is located in the highlands of Ethiopia), Cairo maintained a long-term strategic and economic interest in Ethiopian affairs. (6) Nasser played on Addis Ababa's long-held threat perception of Ethiopia as a 'Christian island surrounded in a hostile Muslim sea that Egypt might work to isolate Ethiopia regionally stir up an internal insurrection against the Selassie regime, or promote war. (7) The threat of war emerged as a particularly acute concern for Ethiopia when in July 1960 the British and Italian Somalilands were granted independence and merged into the Republic of Somalia--an overwhelmingly Muslim country with irredentist ethnic-based territorial designs on Ethiopia's Somali-inhabited Ogaden region.

Nasser's rhetoric and regional policies essentially pushed Iran and Ethiopia into an informal regional alliance with Israel and Turkey. In the aftermath of the July 1958 coup in Iraq, many Western officials (wrongly) assumed Nasser had instigated and would control the new radical government that had seized power in Baghdad. Israel now moved to establish formal military and intelligence relationships with non-Arab states in the greater Middle East region. Israel's so-called 'strategy of the periphery' represented a response by regional states--Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia--who felt threatened by Nasserism. (8) The Shah would support Ethiopia (against Muslim Somalia) so long as Haile Selassie remained in power and did so even after Gamal Nasser died in September 1970 and a more moderate pro-Western Egyptian government led by President Anwar Sadat assumed power in Cairo.

Tehran's strategic calculation would change, however, following the Ethiopian revolution that overthrew Emperor Selassie in September 1974 and eventually led to the emergence, in February 1977, of a radical, pro-Soviet military regime in Addis Ababa. Iran would eventually embrace the pro-Soviet government in Mogadishu that had been led since 1969 by President Si ad Barre. The Shah's containment policy in the Horn of Africa had now shifted from containing the spread of Nasserism to containing communism. Iran's change in alliance partners from Ethiopia to Somalia in the Horn of Africa seemed to be based on two political-strategic calculations: i) the Shahs obsession with containing the spread of communism or radicalism in the greater Middle East region; and ii) to prove Iran's strategic value to the United States--one of Washington's designated 'Twin Pillars' in the Persian Gulf--if granted the continued sale of billions of dollars of American weapons to the Shah's regime could project...