By Alex Ekemenah, Chief Analyst
The ongoing confrontation between the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and the Federal Government and the involvement of the Islamic Republic of Iran showed the grave weaknesses in the conduct of Nigeria’s foreign policy over the years viz: the gross inability to stand up to a hostile foreign state actor meddling in her internal affairs.
Introduction
This write-up is exclusively devoted to a critical examination of the extant relationship between Nigeria and Iran over the confrontation with the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. This write-up is of the view that Nigeria has failed woefully to develop muscular foreign policy or diplomacy to defend herself against a powerful external state actor hostile (but pretend to be friendly) to its sovereignty and national security – over the years.
(Fortuitously in January 2016, this writer completed a 49-page article (Times New Roman at 12 font size, single-line spacing) with 132 references examining the December 12, 2015 clash between the Shiites and the Nigerian Army. The article also went on to examine the relationship between Nigeria and Iran within the context of the skirmishes between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the execution of the Iranian Shiite cleric and 46 others on January 2, 2016. But I have avoided quoting the said article, preferring to write the current one after which I can compare what was written in January 2016 with the current one to see how my views have changed in the last three years over the same issue).
Why this international aspect of the brewing crisis is germane is because in the media reportage and analysis of the issue and the concomitant national discourse hardly has there been any deep analysis of the Iranian involvement. Nobody has dug deep into it. Nobody has ever asked very salient questions about the Iranian equation. What exactly is Iranian involvement in this brewing crisis, its depth and scope? What exactly does Iran want? Why would a foreign country involve itself in the strictly internal affairs of another sovereign country on account of an individual or organization (movement) that has ran afoul of the law? What are the strategic issues at stake that are playing themselves out in this matter? What exactly is the tenor of Nigerian Government’s objection to the Iranian involvement in this sordid affair?
This write-up is meant to fill this gap in knowledge.
Historical Perspective
Nigeria and Iran has been enjoying cozy relationship for decades – in fact since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. The relationship attained a new tempo when Nigeria and Iran found themselves in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) founded in September 1960. While Iran was one of the five founders of OPEC, Nigeria joined it in 1971 after the bloody civil war of 1967-70. Thus Nigeria is a late comer to OPEC.
Nigeria-Iran diplomatic relationship is prima facie based on trade, business and cultural agreements signed at different times over the decades.
For instance, the trade volume between the two countries has increased over the years as captured in a brief news report by The Nation newspaper dated May 25, 2015
The trade volume between Nigeria and Iran is estimated at $50 million annually and it is poised to rise … as both countries deepen trade relations. Speaking ahead of the first Iran Solo Exhibition holding from June 9 to 11, in Lagos, the Iran Ambassador to Nigeria, Saeed Koozechi, said despite sanctions by Western countries on his country, it is determined to boost its trade relations to leading global economies such as Nigeria. He said Iran is the second largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa region, with an estimated 77.3 million population. “Iran is the 18th largest country in the world, with an area of 1.64 million kilometer square. The economy is characterised by a large hydrocarbon sector, small scale agriculture and services sector. We also have a noticeable state presence in manufacturing and financial services,” he said. Koozechi said Iran ranks second globally in natural gas reserves and fourth in proven crude oil reserves. (https://thenationonlineng.net/nigeria-iran-bilateral-trade-volume-hits-50m/)
It was also reported by the Financial Tribune, dated February 13, 2018, that Iran exported $6 million worth of goods to Nigeria during the first 10 months of the current Iranian year (March 21, 2017-March 20, 2018), registering a 55% increase compared with the corresponding period of last year, secretary of Trade Promotion Organization of Iran’s Nigeria Desk, Mahmoud Haji Yousefipour, said.
The main exported goods to the African country, he added, included vaseline, paper, biscuit, tomato paste, syrup, chocolate, polyethylene, auto parts, floorings and construction material, IRNA reported.
“Iran plans to expand cooperation with Nigeria. Recently, there were numerous meetings headed by the Iranian vice president to expand cooperation with Africa, particularly Nigeria, the biggest economy in the continent. A number of decisions had been taken and this will soon translate from words to action,” Iran’s Ambassador to Nigeria Morteza Rahimi Zarchi was quoted as saying in Abuja. (https://financialtribune.com/articles/economy-domestic-economy/81868/iranian-exports-to-nigeria-up-55)
The relationship reached another watershed with the establishment of D-8 Group of Developing Countries which includes Iran, Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.
The Developing 8 (D-8) countries consists’ of Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. D-8 countries are an alliance of developing Muslim countries who are members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), which is established as an economic association. This group of countries was set up on June 15, 1997 after a declaration in Istanbul Turkey. The declaration included a plan to progressively diminish tariffs on particular goods between member-states, with supervision of the process by a supervisory committee. The purpose of this association of countries is a reduction of barriers to enable free trade between member countries, and to encourage inter-state cooperation. Despite the importance of D-8 countries, empirical literature analyzing D-8 member’s countries trade with each other is limited. (Tash, M. S., Jajri, I. B., and Tash, N. S.: “An Analysis of Bilateral Trade between Iran and D-8 Countries”, in Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume 12 Issue 2 Version 1.0 February 2012, https://umexpert.um.edu.my/file/publication/00001636_89155.pdf)
The interesting point to note here is that Nigeria’s membership both of the D-8 and Organization of Islamic Conference is based on being regarded “exclusively” as a Muslim country contrary to the secular status of the country as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.
There is without doubt a sort of political relationship that can easily be extrapolated from the diplomatic, economic and cultural relationships even though this is often mooted in public debate because of the different political trajectories the two countries have followed in their State evolution. Military relationship or alliance is, meanwhile, almost non-existent if not completely non-existent. But today, Iran is a nuclear power, claiming to have nuclear weapons which the whole world led by the United State is working assiduously to limit if not abolish it completely. Nigeria is nowhere near a nuclear power – a country that can barely supply meager electricity to its population.
In all the bilateral trade agreements (including cultural and diplomatic agreements) that Nigeria has signed with Iran so far, no strategic goals could be identified within these agreements – whereas, from all evidences available, Iranian strategic foreign policy goals could easily be identified vis: projecting its power beyond her immediate region to become a global power of reckoning.
The key goals of Iranian leadership’s national security policy, including foreign and defense policies, according to Kenneth Katzman, are
- Seeks to deter or thwart U.S. or other efforts to invade or intimidate Iran or to bring about a change of regime.
- Has sought to take advantage of opportunities of regional conflicts to overturn a power structure in the Middle East that it asserts favors the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Muslim Arab regimes.
- Seeks to enhance its international prestige and restore a sense of “greatness” reminiscent of ancient Persian empires.
- Advances its foreign policy goals, in part by providing material support to regional allied governments and armed factions. Iranian officials characterize the support as helping the region’s “oppressed” and assert that Saudi Arabia, in particular, is instigating sectarian tensions and trying to exclude Iran from regional affairs.
- Supports acts of international terrorism, as the “leading” or “most active” state sponsor of terrorism, according to each annual State Department report on international terrorism since the early 1990s. (Katzman, K.: “Iran’s Foreign and Defense Policies”, Washington DC, US Congressional Research Service, July 23, 2019)
Thus, while Nigeria is pusillanimously cosseting hostile foreign powers such as Iran, for variety of reasons but notably for reason of hunger for foreign investments (a hunger that has dominated the nation’s economic policy environment), Iran is busy pursuing her foreign policy objectives of expanding and/or extending its sphere influence, beyond her immediate region, in Africa with Nigeria as a focal point/target or linchpin, using the vehicle of foreign investment for projecting power to the outside world.
At the height of it all, Iran is even seeking to establish universities in Nigeria. This was reported in February 2018. Iranian Ambassador to Nigeria, Morteza Rahimi Zarchi said through signing a new deal, Iran would be able to open some branches of Iranian universities in Nigeria. “Iranian universities have advanced both qualitatively and quantitatively, and the cost is competitive. These are some of the reasons Iran is targeted by some Nigerians seeking higher education”, said the Ambassador. “We are very hopeful and confident that through signing of new agreement in the field of developing scientific and educational activities, we are going to expand our cooperation in this field to Nigeria very soon”. (https://dailypost.ng/2018/02/02/want-establish-university-nigeria-iran/)
Why would Nigeria not agree to such a deal when she has consciously or unconsciously ruined her educational system over the years? Why would unwary Nigerians not flocked to such universities when the Nigerian university admission process has failed majority of them?
What is generally known in the security and intelligence circles is that universities are the most fertile and veritable grounds for recruitment into the world of security, intelligence and counter-intelligence. Iran has come out openly to declare that it wishes to establish universities through which Nigerian youths can be recruited into their own intelligence services as agents-in-place, etc – and we all openly welcome it.
Nigeria’s Failure is Iran’s Gain
However, despite the seemingly yummy relationship between Iran and many African countries, including Nigeria, it has not been a smooth sail for Iran in its ambition to project its strategic interests in Africa as part of its expansionist foreign policy. Nigeria has shown no intellectual ability to exploit the internal weaknesses of its perceived foreign enemies to its own advantages. In fact, it can be argued that Nigeria is probably not simply interested in such arduous task. Insights into this ambivalent status of its relationship with Africa by Iran was provided by Alex Vatanka, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and the Jamestown Foundation in Washington D.C., writing in The National Interest in late March 2016, showing the stresses and failures of Iranian diplomatic foray in Africa. Interesting in this regard is that Nigeria was even part of the stresses and failures of Iranian diplomacy in Africa when it joined other African countries to stand and vote against Iran, for instance, in the UN over its nuclear program in 2010. (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/irans-awkward-diplomacy-africa-15571)
For instance, even though Nigeria did not break diplomatic relations with Iran over the discovery of arms shipment in Lagos from Iran in October 2010, it provided an alibi for The Gambia to break diplomatic ties with Tehran. Of course, Nigeria and Iran has since papered over the diplomatic row generated by the illegal arms shipment brouhaha. Nigeria did not deem it important to send a powerful message to Iran by breaking diplomatic relationship, if only for a short period, to show its displeasure and tell Iran never to put its nose where it does not belong in the Nigeria’s unfolding internal crisis then. While other smaller African countries were able to call the bluffing of Iran by breaking diplomatic relationship with Iran, Nigeria does not seem to have the balls to do so.
Vatanka further stated that “For Ahmadinejad, who for a while genuinely wanted to challenge the influence of Western states, and particularly the United States, Africa was a key battleground. The continent has no shortage of impoverished Muslim communities that on paper might have been ripe for his populist and anti-Western message. But aside from token successes, as when Tehran managed to become an observer state in the African Union, the continent’s states through their actions—such as the 2010 UN vote against Tehran, or Sudan’s recent diplomatic 180-degree turn— showed that, when pressed hard, they will not put all other interests aside in order to choose Iran.
“African states have proven that it does not take much for them to distance themselves from Iran. Nor does it have to involve pressure from the United States. Take the decisions by Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti and Comoros in January 2016 to all cut diplomatic relations with Iran. These decisions followed Saudi Arabia’s anger at the attack against its embassy in Tehran, and Riyadh urging others to follow suit in its decision to break ties with Iran. This latest quarrel with several African states in the wake of its crisis with Saudi Arabia has reminded Tehran that since 1979, it has largely failed to generate much depth in its Africa policy” (Ibid).
Even though Nigeria is not known to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states (because ostensibly it does not have the ability to do so or is too fearful to do so) studies in Iran’s domestic travails provide opportunities to show that it is hardly better than the very countries it is trying to interfere in their domestic affairs such as Nigeria in this case.
The Iranian domestic travails have been carefully documented by various strategic think tanks especially in the United States and Western Europe including other advanced countries such as China and Russia. In short, Iran suffers from array of problems at home and abroad accentuated by its political and economic crises – arising from the dual system of authoritarianism of the clergy headed by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the presidential democracy on the other hand. More importantly, its gross violations of the human rights of its own citizens have been documented by the United States Department of State and others including Amnesty International and other human rights bodies. In this regard, Iran has no moral basis to ask Nigeria to respect the human rights of citizens. He who comes to equity must come with clean hands!
According to Daniel Byman of Brookings Institution, writing in January 2018, “Iran’s problems limit its power and create openings for undermining its influence. … the United States and its allies should recognize that Iran’s foreign policy is shaky and vulnerable in its structure of political authority, its economy, its military and its diplomatic posture. Iran’s weaknesses will reduce Iran’s clout, foster infighting, and otherwise make it difficult for the regime to increase its sway abroad. Some of these weaknesses may also cause additional internal unrest if not managed properly.
“Iran’s biggest problems stems from the unusual, and often unwieldy, dual system of government that mixes elections with a powerful Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, exercises a veto over Iranian decision-making, heads the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the judicial system, and state television, among other powers. Khamenei is almost 80 years old, and rumors say that he will step down. Although Khamenei’s role is supposedly based on his religious authority, his religious credentials were always suspect, and he lacks the charisma of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei.” (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2018/01/03/irans-foreign-policy-weaknesses-and-opportunities-to-exploit-them/)
Currently, Iran faces an epochal dilemma, a situation analogous to a Catch-22 trap or being caught between the Scylla and Charybdis as described by Nikolay Kozhanov in his book: Iran’s Strategic Thinking: The Evolution of Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1979-2018, published by Gerlach Press in 2018.
The book aims to offer insights into the ideological motives behind Tehran’s behaviour in the international arena, considering the twin desires to protect Iran’s national interests, and to project raw power. This can then be used to understand the current foreign policy of Iran in the region and generate an informed prognosis about Tehran’s diplomatic moves in the future.
But the significance of the existing relationship today is that while Iran has emerged clearly as a regional power in the Middle East and a rising power in the global arena despite the challenges it faced especially in its hostile relationship with the United States (an established superpower), Nigeria on the other hand has ever remained a dwarf in sub-Sahara Africa contrary to being regarded as “Giant of Africa”. While Iran is making strides in nearly every facet of its society, Nigeria is racked by conflicts and crises of all descriptions ranging from poverty to insecurity of life and property. This is the amazing sharp contrast between the two countries.
Armin Rosen, a Washington DC-based freelance journalist in an article titled “Desperate for Allies and Secret Assets, Iran Penetrates Africa” made some interesting revelations.
- Iran has been flummoxed in its efforts at building a real coalition of allies in Africa, despite repeated attempts at luring parts of the continent to its side — Iranian soft-power failures in Africa spans the continent, from Senegal to Comoros to South Africa.
- In Africa, as in the Middle East, Iran has a longer game in mind. Even in the absence of any solid diplomatic alliances or victories, Iran is using its relationships in Africa to organize and advance its ambitious aims and terrorist networks. With its traditional diplomacy stifled, Iran has exhibited a worrying ability to overcome even Yarmouk-level setbacks — to accumulate asymmetrical victories for its aggressive, anti-western agenda.
- By the standards of traditional diplomacy, Iran’s outreach in Africa has been disorganized and even amateurish. Iran has the global-level vision of a rising, self-styled superpower. The Islamic Republic clearly understands the need for alliances outside of its immediate neighborhood — and it appreciates the opportunities embodied in developing countries in need of cheap oil, foreign investment and powerful friends. The ambition is there, but Iran’s execution has been lacking. Senegal is a chief example: an economic and diplomatic push into one of West Africa’s most stable and powerful countries in the late 2000s included the opening of a jointly-owned automobile factory, and a series of presidential-level visits to Dakar and Tehran. But in what could be a glaring instance of Iran’s diplomatic objectives conflicting with its broader foreign policy, the Islamic Republic was caught facilitating the transfer of weaponry to rebels in Senegal’s south. Diplomatic relations were abruptly cut off in early 2011, and only recently resumed.
- There’s a clear disparity between Iranian goals in Africa, which reflect a maturing and globally ambitious foreign policy, and its ability to deliver on those goals, which reflect a self-image vastly out of proportion to Iran’s actual diplomatic abilities.
- Soft power failures, however, are just one small aspect of a more alarming whole. For the Islamic Republic, every setback in conventional diplomacy masks its asymmetrical successes, which sometimes conflict with traditional diplomatic objectives.
- All across the continent, Iran’s expansionist foreign policy is in direct conflict with its economic and soft power outreach—and Iran has succeeded is using Africa to advance its interests anyway”.
South Africa provides a narrative of success and failure for Iranian global outreach. While Iran’s oil trade with South Africa was cut off due to pressure from the US, Iran, however, managed to score a crucial consolation trophy: a major investment from South African cell phone giant MTN, along with a raft of favors from the South African government. “In early June (2013), the country’s Department of Energy announced that it had totally cut off its oil trade with Iran, and Trevor Houser of the Rhodium Group, which tracks the effects of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales, confirmed by email that “South African customs has not recorded any oil imports from Iran for several months now.”
- According to a civil complaint filed in District of Columbia federal court, MTN elbowed Turkcell, a Turkish competitor, out of a 49% stake in an Iranian joint venture called Irancell by “promising Iran that MTN could deliver South Africa’s vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency, promising Iran defense equipment otherwise prohibited by national and international laws, and the outright bribery of high-level government officials in both Iran and South Africa.”
- The suit alleges that between 2003 and 2005, MTN won its Iranian license through a series of lucrative kickbacks. These consisted of straightforward bribes paid to Iranian officials, although the suit presents strong evidence that South Africa’s pro-Iran votes at the IAEA between 2005 and 2008 were a quid pro quo for the Islamic Republic’s approval of MTN’s Irancell investment. The complaint boasted over 60 pages of documentation, including damning internal emails leaked by an employee at MTN’s Tehran offices. It goes into specific detail about vehicles and military equipment the South Africans would provide to Iran if MTN were awarded the Irancell stake, a list which included “Rooivalk helicopters (based on the U.S. Apache platform), frequency hopping encrypted military radios, sniper rifles, G5 howitzers, canons…and other defense articles.” (The weapons were never delivered, and the Turkcell case was withdrawn in May of 2013–but only because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a month earlier that international corporate civil suits could no longer be tried in U.S. court).
- MTN still owns nearly half of Irancell, an arrangement that nets the company over $117 million a year. Irancell’s Iranian owner is a holding company whose investors include Iran Electronics Industries, a government-connected electronics and defense company that has been under U.S. sanctions since September of 2008. Iran and the IRGC are still leveraging their relationship with South Africa, even after the collapse of the companies’ oil trade.
In October 2015, barely five months after coming to power, Buhari administration fined MTN through the Nigerian Communications Commission a whooping sum of $2.5 billion for for not meeting the deadline set up by the mobile network operators (MNOs) for disconnecting the Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM) with improper registration. The main concern of the Federal Government then was that this improper registration of SIM cards was posing serious security threats to the nation especially by the Boko Haram insurgents. Later, MTN admitted guilt but was able to negotiate down the fine. The point here, however, is that Nigerians may never really know what was involved in the incident because of the various strategic interests involved in the matter – interests that without doubt have serious implications for Nigeria’s national security.
It is also interesting to note at this juncture that just prior to the Saudi execution of 47 convicts including the Shiite cleric in early January 2016, the same Saudi Arabia spearheaded a 34-country anti-terrorism coalition which was joined by Nigeria at the time. Members include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinians, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. But prominent was the absence of the Shiite-majority nations of Iran and Iraq including Syria. Till date, nobody can say what has been the contribution of this coalition to the fight against terrorism and insurgency in Nigeria as Boko Haram (or ISWAP) is still rampaging in the North eastern part of the country.
- This pattern—in which Iran scrapes for asymmetrical gains within a challenging diplomatic environment, and in spite of its own internally divided conventional diplomacy—repeated itself in Nigeria.
- In October of 2010, Nigerian authorities scored the largest seizure of an Iranian weapons shipment in African history, when a container ship carrying crates of rocket launchers and heavy mortars was impounded in the port of Lagos.
- This embarrassment hardly ended Iran’s efforts in the country. In June of 2013, a Hezbollah cell was uncovered in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. And Iran has an asset in Nigeria that’s arguably more valuable than a foothold for its Lebanese proxies: Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, a radical Iranian-trained Shi’ite cleric and a promoter of Iranian state ideology in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country.
Another revelation was how Iran recruited Ibrahim El-Zakzaky in the early 80s aftermath the 1979 Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- According to researcher Philip Smyth, Zakzaky’s career is the product of an Iranian recruitment effort in the early 1980s. “They approached him because he was leading various Islamist-style groups, and they told them if you come on board with us, you’ll have money and an ideology you can push.” He spoke out in favor of Khomeini-style clerical rule, and emerged as a leading hardliner during Nigeria’s late-90s debate over the imposition of Sharia law in the country’s predominantly Muslim north.
- Perhaps significantly, there were almost no Nigerian-born Shi’ites in the country at the time of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, according to Thurston. A 2009 Pew Forum report said that there are as many as 4 million. Only a minority buys into hard-line Khomeinism, but Zakzaky has still aided in Shi’ism’s spread in Nigeria. He is a careful and multilingual expositor of Iran’s state theology, and his skills were on full display during a 2009 lecture in London in honor of the 20th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s death.
- In Zakzaky’s view, Khoneimism had already triumphed over the revolutionary false consciousness of communism, and would deal a similar deathblow to western capitalism as well. “The Imam understood different aspects of the din [religion] as a universal message for the entire governance of mankind,” the Iranian-trained cleric said, in English, before closing his speech with a firm rejection of any kind of non-universalist, non-Khomeinist form of political Islam. “Some people think that just as we have Imam Khomeini in Iran, other Muslim countries should have their own Khomeini-type leader…Look, the world, the whole world, the entire world needs only one Khomeini, and it has one.”
The details of how Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran (MOIS) (the Iranian external intelligence agency known as VAJA and previously known as VEVAK) recruited Ibrahim El-Zakzaky will probably remain unknown forever. We would never know who his handlers/case officers were over the last forty five years. We will never know the kind of briefings and de-briefings he had over the years. We will never know the kind of espionage that El-Zakzaky may have conducted for Iran over the years and what aspect of our national security has been compromised through his felonious activities. However, it is largely unfortunate that Nigeria did nothing to thwart the recruitment and indoctrination of Zakzaky by the Iranian Government and its intelligence agencies but allowed Zakzaky to grown pinion which he is now flapping to create whirlpool of Shiite fundamentalism that has now swept the Northern part of the country if not the whole country. Small causes, big effects!
These are the grave sins not just by the Iranians but more so by the Nigerian State and its security apparatus notably the National Security Organization of yore and its current successors: National Intelligence Agency and Department of State Security.
It might, however, be possible that El-Zakzaky is a mere opportunist, even harmless in this regard to the extent that he merely used the Iranians to feather his own nests, to enrich himself and live an opulent life; and create a cult followership around him to make himself grandiosely larger than life and important in the eyes of the Northern Muslims and the Nigerian public as a whole.
However, given the kind of troubles that his movement has caused over the years, his public statements including the vocabularies or grammatical expressions (and their hidden meanings), there is enough ground to suggest and believe that El-Zakzaky is convinced of his own worldviews, mindset and operations; and therefore he can only be reasonably regarded as a clear and present danger to national security if he not contained in his activities.
- Iran has achieved at least a few of its asymmetrical objectives in Nigeria: it has an ideological foothold within the country’s Shi’ite community, which might include as much as 5 percent of Nigeria’s Muslims. And Hezbollah was able to sustain weapons caches and commercial interests in a country that, according to Smyth, has a notable Lebanese Shi’ite presence.
Ø But perhaps the most startling Iranian success in Africa has to do with its pursuit of the ultimate asymmetrical objective: a nuclear weapons capability. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe inked a uranium agreement with Iran in 2011, and Ahmadinejad visited Niger, the world’s fourth-largest uranium producer, late in his second term as the Islamic Republic’s president.
Ø A 2006 Wikileaks cable asserts that Iran had smuggled Congolese uranium through ports in Tanzania. As for Tanzania—its government has proven remarkably tolerant of Iranian tankers operating under Tanzanian registration in order to evade the oil sanctions regime. Tanzania is a close enough U.S. ally to warrant a visit from Barack Obama during his July, 2013 trip to Africa. Iran can get what it needs even from African countries with established, pro-western bona fides—and despite an almost total absence of real friends in the continent.
- As with its nuclear program, Iran has found its way around the obstructions that diplomacy and statecraft are constantly throwing in its path. Despite the pinch of international sanctions, and setbacks like the Stuxnet computer virus, Iran has increased the number of its operating uranium centrifuges, along with its stockpile of fissile material. Thanks to diplomatic stalling tactics, like the ones perfected by Iranian president-elect and former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, and its patient, decades-long accumulation of nuclear components, Iran has steadily progressed towards a nuclear weapons capability —even in the face of a nearly-global effort at derailing them.
- In Africa, Iran has also found a way of overcoming its pariah status. The Islamic Republic is using Africa to extend Hezbollah’s reach, obtain nuclear material, advance its commercial interests, and arm its proxies in spite of the seemingly facile nature of what few diplomatic relationships it has in the continent.
- In its traditional diplomacy, Iran continues to possess the sophistication of a rising power, one that sees the necessity of building relationships on a global scale. Even if those relationships haven’t fully materialized, Africa provides worrying evidence of how little Iran really needs traditional alliances, or even competent international diplomacy, to get exactly what it wants. (http://www.thetower.org/article/desperate-for-allies-and-secret-assets-iran-penetrates-africa/)
In all, it does not matter whether Nigeria resent Iranian interference in Nigeria’s domestic affairs as presented by the confrontation with the Shiites. What matter is that Iran has succeeded being a factor to be reckoning with in solving the confrontation. Iran does not have to be in that position in the first place if Nigeria has played its game very well from the very beginning. Nigeria should have neutralized the IMN-led Shiite growth and rebellion long ago when it was still in its inchoate stage.
Conclusion
The problem with our foreign policy is very deep. It boils down to the fact we have no philosophical or ideological basis for our foreign policy objectives or thrusts. Our foreign policy is conducted on ad-hoc basis and has no long-term or strategic goals. There are no trained strategic thinkers who can create the future today, no value chain in intellectual manpower needed to drive coherent ideological-based foreign policy objectives.
What has also become very clear in the current face-off with the IMN in foreign policy context is that Nigeria has willy-nilly surrendered and embraced Sunni as the superior Islamic religious denomination, something that Nigeria should have avoided at all cost for pragmatic reasons. It has not gone unnoticed within the circles of strategic thinkers that Nigeria has tilted herself towards Saudi Arabia because of the preponderance of the Sunni population in the country as against the Shiite population. The contradiction here is that Nigeria is not a State custodian of Sunni values therefore it is pointless rejecting Shiite belief because it is being championed and chaperoned by Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran dictate the terms of whatever their religious followers should believe or not – a situation that should have prompted Nigeria to weigh the benefits and costs of favouring one side against the other. Nigeria and many other Islamic countries should avoid being pawns in the chess game board being played by Iran and Saudi Arabia in their rivalry and Manichean quest for regional hegemonic power. Nigeria has no business making herself a stupid pawn in this dirty dog-eat-dog fight between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky should thank his stars that he is still alive today, at least languishing in detention. He should thank his stars that he has not been eliminated the way Mohammed Yusuf was taken out within 48 hours of his arrest by the soldiers and handed over to the police in Maiduguri in July 2009. Buhari administration is being very benign in this matter. This could not have happened either in Iran or Saudi Arabia without grave repercussions for his life. Saudi Arabia did not hesitate to publicly execute (by beheading) Shaykh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, the prominent Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia, and 46 others on 2 January 2016, for alleged terrorism offences. Iran similarly claimed to have executed hundreds of “terrorists” and “spies” caught over the years.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in conflict since the Iran revolution in 1979 due to three major factors: the Sunni-Shia disagreement, the rivalry for regional hegemony in the Middle East, and the politics of who control the decision-making process in OPEC. These factors are historical in nature and scope with a spillover to other countries that allied with either of the two countries.
The root cause of their foreign policy crisis is their rivalries for hegemonic ambition in the Middle East and a quest for leadership of the Islamic world. The sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiite plays a prominent role to spike hatred within the Muslim community throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia come only short of exchanging blows in war – a war that the United States especially would like to prevent even when it is extremely hostile to Iran – that can only end in catastrophic results. When the chips are down, as the cliché goes, which side would Nigeria be in such a war?