A delegation of politicians from Iran visited Algeria and Tunisia this week, hoping to increase Iran’s presence in Africa, find new friends after Tehran’s disastrous proxy war in Gaza, and turn the page on some unfortunate history in Algeria.
The Iranian delegation was led by Ibrahim Azizi, head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee for the Iranian parliament, and included the Iranian ambassador to Algeria, Mohammad Reza Babai.
Algeria’s relations with Iran are delicate due to lingering animosity over Iran’s role in the brutal Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, known to many Algerians as the “Black Decade.” The war began when the Algerian government canceled legislative elections, fearing Islamists would sweep to power.
The Islamists launched a terrorist war that spiraled into homicidal insanity, with both the insurgents and government forces killing countless civilians. The death toll ultimately topped 200,000, with thousands of the victims completely unaccounted for. Almost every family in Algeria was touched by the conflict.
Iran supported the insurgency, and to this day some resentful Algerians accuse Tehran of attempting to spread Shiite Muslim extremism in their country. Since diplomatic relations were restored in the 2000s, the Algerian government has been considerably more polite to Iran than many of its people would be.
Iran and Algeria have made efforts to shore up their relationship over the past year, emphasizing their common economic and strategic interests, including mutual animosity toward Israel’s war against the Iran-backed terrorists of Hamas in Gaza.
Iran’s interest in improving ties with Algeria might have something to do with Algeria holding a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, a two-year stint that began in January 2024. Algeria used its position to unsuccessfully demand a ceasefire to protect Hamas.
Algerian foreign affairs committee chair Mohamed Amroun said the Iranians’ visit this week provided “an opportunity for the two parties to discuss the current good bilateral relations” and “raise them to the best level by strengthening co-operation and consolidating the registered consensus on many regional and international issues.”
As for Tunisia, the Iranians saw an opening when authoritarian President Kais Saied traveled to Tehran in May to attend the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash.
Raisi’s successor, President Masoud Pezeshkian, returned the favor by rushing to congratulate Saied on his re-election in October – a race he ran in unopposed, having grabbed almost unitary power for himself and thrown his leading opponents in jail.
Saied was the first Tunisian leader to visit Iran since 1965, so his presence at the funeral was momentous. France’s Le Monde thought Saied was signaling a pivot away from the West, which disapproved of his iron-fisted rule, and toward the Axis of Tyranny dominated by Iran, China, and Russia.
“Saied is constantly sending the message to Europeans and Americans that Tunisia has the right to forge or strengthen ties with other powers, including anti-Western ones,” Carnegie Middle East Center research fellow Hamza Meddeb told Le Monde in May.
Interestingly, Saied’s pivot toward Iran appears to have begun in Algeria, during a March summit in Algiers where he was feted as a “guest of honor” and met with the leaders of several Middle Eastern petro-states – including Ebrahim Raisi of Iran, who would be killed less than three months later.
Saied seems interested in joining a coalition of Arab nationalist powers, and when Sunni Muslim powers like Saudi Arabia were turned off by his confrontational stance toward the West, he looked to the Shiite theocracy in Tehran.
Saied is even more confrontational toward Israel, which will likely keep Tunisia at a distance from states that hope to normalize relations with Israel during the second Trump administration. Tunisia was one of the first Arab nations to endorse a “two-state solution” for the Palestinians, but Kais Saied was one of the first Arab leaders to reject it, denouncing negotiations with Israel as “treason” against the Palestinian people.
By August of 2023, Saied was openly saying Israel should be driven out of “all of Palestine,” by which he meant all of Israel. He praised the October 7 atrocities as “legitimate resistance,” and when the Arab League issued a belated joint statement denouncing civilian killings by “both sides,” Saied managed to slip in a footnote stressing “the right of the Palestinian people” to use violence to “establish their independent state on all the land of Palestine.”
Saied has stopped just short of taking actions that would demolish all of his bridges to the West and the Gulf powers, so it is possible he wants to play the tedious game of working the U.S. and Europe against the China-Russia-Iran axis against each other in a bidding war for Tunisia’s affections. Iran’s delegation to Africa this week looks to have put Tehran’s opening bid on the table.