• Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi’s July visit to three East African countries aimed to blunt Iran’s growing economic and political isolation from Europe and the effects of U.S.-led economic sanctions.
• The visited countries – Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe – have generally sought to avoid involvement in major geopolitical schisms such as the war in Ukraine, where Iran is aligned with Russia.
• Raisi sought to bond with his hosts by stressing shared views on social issues, including those on which some East African leaders are sharply at odds with the West.
• Iranian leaders also sought to expand trade relations with East Africa and potentially circumvent U.S.-led sanctions.

Although Iranian officials characterized the visit to East Africa as primarily to boost trade and commercial ties, Raisi indicated that his objectives were to build new alliances with which to exert leverage against the growing economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran from the United States and Europe. Kenya and Uganda are U.S. counterterrorism partners against Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. However, members and institutions of all three governments – Zimbabwe in particular – have been targeted by U.S. sanctions for alleged human rights abuses, corruption, and election-related violence. While Kenya has not been subject to such sanctioning in some time, Ugandan officials were recently sanctioned over the country’s anti-homosexuality legislation. Resentment over U.S. sanctions resonates strongly in Iran, as well as in the countries visited by Raisi.

On the Russian war against Ukraine, in which Iran is materially supporting Russia’s war effort, Zimbabwe and Uganda abstained from the key UN General Assembly vote in March 2022 to condemn the Russian invasion. Kenyan President William Ruto, on the other hand, has sided with NATO leaders by asserting that internationally recognized boundaries must be respected. Yet Ruto, who warmly received Raisi upon arrival, recently characterized “tensions between North and South” as similar to the deteriorating relations between the West and China. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in late 2021 that Western companies should “stop giving us lessons,” a reference to what he claims is Western economic pressure on his government not to expand its economic ties to China. It is clear from this trip that Tehran perceives East Africa as fertile ground for much of the regime’s messaging.

Yet Raisi’s efforts in East Africa might backfire by further alienating Tehran from Western leaders. During his stop in Uganda, Raisi painted Kampala as aligned with Tehran’s views on social issues, calling Western nations’ support for homosexuality one of the “dirtiest” episodes of human history. He supported Uganda’s recently-passed legislation prescribing the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” – legislation that attracted widespread Western condemnation. After meeting with Museveni, Raisi stated: “I believe that this issue, and these strong attacks by the West against the establishment of families and against the culture of the nations, is another area of cooperation for Iran and Uganda.”

Beyond building new partnerships, Iranian leaders and their East African counterparts also sought practical outcomes from the visit. First and foremost, as was evident in Raisi’s June trip to three Latin American countries with whom the United States has strained or hostile relations (Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua), Raisi and the Iranian businessmen in his delegation sought to forge economic ties that would help Tehran undermine the effects of Western sanctions. In advance of the travel, Iran’s foreign ministry publicly forecast that trade with all African countries will increase to more than $2 billion in 2023, although Iranian officials did not provide comparative data for the prior year. Raisi has specifically mentioned Africa’s mineral resources and Iran’s petrochemical experience as potential bases for expanded economic cooperation.

The visit, coupled with prior efforts, yielded some modest, if vague, trade and economic agreements with East African countries. Kenya, which is East Africa’s economic hub, represented the centerpiece of Raisi’s excursion. According to Kenyan President Ruto, Iran intends to set up a manufacturing plant for Iranian vehicles in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa. During the Raisi visit, Iranian and Kenyan ministers signed five memoranda of understanding related to information technology, fisheries, livestock products, and investment promotion. Ruto stated that he also sought Raisi’s commitment to facilitate the export of more Kenyan tea, meat, and other agricultural products to Iran and via Iran to Central Asian countries.

Iran and Uganda have, over the past decade, discussed various forms of energy cooperation, including the development of Uganda’s nuclear program. Uganda is trying to set up a nuclear power plant that authorities say will generate electricity by 2031. As an outcome of the Raisi visit, President Museveni asserted that Uganda would engage Iran for support to develop its energy sector, especially its oil and nuclear programs, through technology transfer or project financing. Raisi might have also obtained some help from Uganda to evade U.S.-led sanctions: in 2022, Museveni proposed that the two countries engage in barter trade to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Setting the groundwork for the Zimbabwe leg of the trip, in early 2023, a Zimbabwean ministerial delegation visited Tehran to deepen cooperation in areas including energy trade. The two countries signed 12 agreements, including establishing a tractor manufacturing plant in Zimbabwe with an Iranian company and a local partner. Other agreements expand cooperation in energy, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications, as well as research, science, and technology projects. Still, many of the agreements and pledges reached during Raisi’s East Africa trip are vague and subject to further negotiation, and it is not clear whether, or how extensively, any agreements reached will be implemented.

June 20th, 2023 

According to leaks of the agreement’s clauses, Iran will reportedly agree not to enrich uranium beyond the 60 percent level, but contrary to the previous 2015 agreement, it will be able to hold on to the uranium that has already been enriched.

This means that the transition to the military-grade enrichment level of over 90 percent becomes a simple process for Iran, lasting several weeks. It also becomes a matter that depends on an Iranian decision rather than on Iran needing to gain the ability to implement the decision.

It is important to emphasize that Iran’s current level of enrichment of 60 percent has no civilian usage.

In exchange for an Iranian enrichment freeze, Tehran will reportedly pledge to stop attacks on US positions in Syria and Iraq via its proxies in these countries.

In addition, Iran will commit to expanding its cooperation with international nuclear inspectors and to not selling ballistic missiles to Russia.

The US, for its part, will not remove its sanctions on Iran but will avoid making them more severe.

However, a big question mark hovers over the issue of sanctions enforcement.

For example, according to some reports, the agreement would lead to the US allowing foreign tankers carrying Iranian oil to sail through.

Subsequently, the US will thaw billions of dollars in Iranian assets in exchange for the release of American prisoners by Iran.

In the July 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, Iran was granted access to $150 billion dollars of its frozen assets.

Following the JCPOA, Iran’s military deployment in the Middle East changed dramatically. The starting point of Iranian involvement in the Middle East as we know it today, involving tens of Iranian proxy militias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, and influence in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and more – is the previous nuclear agreement.

Today we see Iranian involvement everywhere in the world. It is occurring through the dissemination of Islamic revolutionary concepts (see, for example, our report on Iran in Europe), in the campaign to turn former Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani into a mythical figure from Kashmir to the Middle East, and in the supplies of weapons, especially UAVs, to Russia in its war in Ukraine. Iranian activities have also stretched out to Venezuela and to countries in Africa.

Nevertheless, it must also be noted that despite it enrichment capabilities, Iran still has a significant gap separating it from an ability to assemble a bomb, known as the weaponization stage.

The Iranian weapons group, as it is dubbed, is responsible for taking over the nuclear program after the uranium enrichment phase is complete. That group was formerly headed by Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated in Iran in November 2020.

There does not appear to be any progress in this area of weaponization involving a nuclear warhead creation and placing it on a missile.

This boils down to an Iranian decision, and if Iran wants to advance down this route, it would take it between one to two years to do so.

The question, therefore, arises: What will prevent Iran from moving forward on these issues? A few months ago, an American senior official issued a statement that could be understood to mean that Washington was giving the green light for an Israeli attack.

US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, appeared to signal a new threat by Washington when he stated on May 4th, “But what I will simply say is that on the deterrence side, working with our partners—including working very closely with Israel, including through that military exercise that I described before, but also through intensive sessions that I have personally participated in with everyone from the prime minister to the national security advisor to the minister of defense—we will continue to send a clear message about the costs and consequences of going too far, while at the same time continuing to seek the possibility of a diplomatically brokered outcome that puts Iran’s nuclear program back in the box.”

If the agreement emerges in line with the leaked clauses, this would mean that Sullivan’s statement was designed to put the Israelis to sleep and to nudge the Iranians to move forward, reviving dormant negotiations.

Unfortunately, the statement did not improve the emerging agreement, and the entire world remains dependent on Tehran’s decision on whether to reach the bomb or not.

In my meetings with groups, I express my displeasure at the world’s expectations of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites if negotiations fail.

Everyone treats the issue as if it were an Israeli problem.

A nuclear Iran with launch capabilities already developed is a global problem. The Saudi and Egyptian ambitions to develop their own nuclear program as a counterweight to the Iranian program is another factor that can eventually undermine global security.

An attack on Iranian nuclear sites should be a joint operation by anyone who cares about world peace. It would form a very strong message, not only to Iran but also to Russia, which has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the West several times over the past two years.

It’s time to change the framing of this discourse. The goal should be an agreement that excludes Iran any ability to develop nuclear weapons and not one that will be for a regime whose ideology is based on hatred of Western values.

• A recent border clash between Iranian and Taliban forces marked the latest phase of a longstanding water rights dispute between the two countries.
• The fighting might upend Tehran’s relationship with Taliban leaders, which is already burdened by the Taliban’s brutal treatment of Shia Muslims and some Persian-speaking Afghan groups.
• Both governments are adversaries of the United States and its allies, but U.S. officials engage Taliban leaders on a range of issues and support their efforts to combat more radical Islamist terrorist groups.
• During the clashes, the Taliban used U.S.-made military equipment left behind when American forces and allies withdrew from the country in August 2021.

The recent clashes have contributed to growing tensions between the two countries over the sharing of water from the Helmand River, one of two rivers that flow from Afghanistan into Iran. According to the bilateral Afghan Iranian Water Treaty of 1973, Afghanistan is expected to provide 850 million cubic meters water to Iran every year from the river. However, due largely to climate change and the country’s inefficient water management system, Afghanistan has been facing drought-like situations in recent years and has not met its obligation to Iran. Facing its own water challenges, Iran has been pressing for its agreed share of water from that source.

Drought has been a problem in Iran for some 30 years, but has worsened over the past decade. According to a joint report by the Iranian Space Agency and UN-SPIDER, the UN’s space-based disaster management organization, “most rivers in [Iran] are either dry or severely depleted” ever since a particularly harsh three-year drought concluded in 2002. The Iran Meteorological Organization says an estimated 97% of the country now faces some level of drought. In 2021, these conditions led to protests across multiple Iranian cities. This eventually led to a violent government response, as police dispersed demonstrations by burning down tents and firing teargas into crowds. A week before the most recent border skirmish, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban to respect Iran’s rights to water under the 1973 treaty. Iran has previously accused Afghanistan of withholding water as a punishment for Iran’s treatment of Afghan refugees in the country. A statement shared by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter said that Raisi’s “frequent demands for water” were “harmful” in light of Afghanistan’s own drought situation and warned that Iranian statements on the matter had put the countries’ bilateral relations at risk.

The fighting has threatened Iranian diplomacy with its neighbor. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Iran has hosted meetings with Taliban figures, and although Iran still does not formally recognize the Taliban’s governing authority, it allowed the Taliban to operate the Afghan Embassy in Tehran as of February 2023. Some Iranian officials sought to limit the diplomatic fallout of the clashes by attributing threatening Taliban statements against Iran to “low-ranking” members of the Taliban who have since been “dismissed” by the organization. Meanwhile, the deputy spokesman of the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told a Saudi newspaper that the group sought to preserve relations with its neighbors and did not want to see the situation to escalate.

The global community, and particularly the United States, has been hesitant to take any position on a dispute between two regimes, and no country has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. U.S officials remain suspicious of the Taliban’s commitment to deny safe haven to al-Qaeda figures, particularly since the killing of Ayman al Zawahiri by a U.S. airstrike in July 2022 revealed he was residing comfortably in Kabul. They also oppose the group’s treatment of women and minorities, as well as its human rights practices more generally. However, a wide range of diplomats, primarily from the region but also from the United States and its allies, engage Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and in Qatar, where Taliban leaders maintain a significant diplomatic presence. U.S. and other Western leaders are also at odds with the leaders in Tehran over issues including the expansion of its nuclear program, its provision of missiles and armed drones to regional armed factions, and its supply of drones to the Russian war effort in Ukraine. Some U.S. leaders assess that Iran’s clashes with the Taliban can serve to weaken or embarrass Tehran’s forces and distract the Iranian government from its objectives in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere where its own forces or proxy forces are operating.

The border skirmishing also exhibited the lingering consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as videos on social media depicted Taliban fighters deploying to the Iran border with U.S-made weaponry, including multiple Humvees (at least one of which appeared armed with an M240 machine gun) in addition to an American military truck transporting a Soviet Howitzer. Following the rapid collapse of the previous Afghan government’s security forces, the Taliban seized control of their weapon stockpiles. Of the $18.6 billion worth of military equipment provided to the Afghan National Security Forces by the United States over 16 years, some 37 percent of that – approximately $7 billion worth –  was left behind, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.