The origins of Iran’s political and cultural ties with Africa under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

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Lecture outline

This talk explores the development of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Africa policy in the final three decades of his reign, examining both geopolitical developments in the Middle East that compelled Iran to look to Africa, and the specific Iranian context. It discusses what Iran’s relations with Africa can tell us about both the position of the Global South in general in the Shah’s foreign policy and his grand strategy in the Indian Ocean. It also asks why Iran was an appealing political and economic partner to African countries; specifically, what were the roles of Islam and monarchy, how were relations shaped by the Afro-Asian solidarity movement that grew out of the post-war era of decolonisation, and in what way were these ties impacted by the Cold War? The talk ends by exploring how the nature of Iran’s relationships in Africa changed in the decade immediately following the revolution, and what a study of the origins of these relationships can tell us about Iran’s relations with Africa today.

The Lecture will be followed by a light reception starting at 7:30PM.

About the Speaker

Robert Steele is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has a PhD from the University of Exeter and has held fellowships at UCLA and LSE. He is the author of The Shah’s Imperial Celebrations of 1971: Nationalism, Culture and Politics in Late Pahlavi Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2020) and Pahlavi Iran’s Relations with Africa: Cultural and Political Connections in the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and co-editor (with Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet) of Iran and Global Decolonisation: Politics and Resistance After Empire (Gingko Library, 2023). He is also the editor of the English translation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Towards the Great Civilization (I.B. Tauris, 2024), commissioned by the Pahlavi Library in the late 1970s, but never published. He is currently writing an intellectual biography of the Shah’s speechwriter and cultural advisor at the Imperial Court, Shojaeddin Shafa.

Host or Publisher British Institute of Persian Studies