2011 Joint Area Centers Symposium
Session 5: Iran, Africa, and China

"Iran’s Strategy in Africa"
Alex Vatanka (The Middle East Institute)

Chair: Poshek Fu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

The second half of 2010 witnessed a flurry of interaction between Iranian diplomats and their African counterparts. Not all the buzz has been beneficial to Tehran, as was most recently demonstrated by the Republic of the Gambia’s and then Senegal's decisions to break its ties with Iran, but the overall activity nonetheless reflects the increasing emphasis Tehran is putting on closer relations with countries on the continent. This approach is meant to help the Islamic regime in Tehran achieve the kind of global role it envisages for itself by augmenting its political clout in regions of the world such as Africa and Latin America, where it evidently believes it can compete with Western powers for influence. However, despite the diplomatic advances Iran’s foreign policy has made in Africa in the past few years, an African triumph for the Islamic Republic is still far from a lasting reality.