The Iranian president is focusing on securing drone sales in return for food during his latest trip to Africa.
According to Kayhan newspaper, affiliated with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, President Raisi is working on “extraterritorial cultivation, export of products such as drones and cars, petrochemical products, as well as technical exports”.
The latest revelations will come as no shock, the barter deals of the heavily sanctioned regime the only way it can muddle through its current crisis, calling in favors from its dictatorial allies around the world from South America to Africa.
Iran has been providing drones to guerrilla groups across the Middle East for decades, and most recently, has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with hundreds of Shahed drones used in large scale missile attacks.
Only in March, Omar Hilal, Morocco’s ambassador to the United Nations, warned: “Iran, after undermining the stability of Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, is in the process of destabilizing our region.”
Concerns for Iran’s involvement in Africa are also high. In October, the US State Department said Iran sent Ethiopia armed drones in the summer of 2021 in violation of a standing UN Security Council resolution.
The United States and its European allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies involved with the drone program and shipments of the weapon to Russia.
Iran first denied it had supplied the drones but in early November foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian admitted the deliveries, while claiming they were sent before the Russian invasion.
