Iran Finds New Way to Challenge U.S. Through Old Cold War Movement

Just one day after becoming the ninth member of a regional security bloc led by China and Russia, Iran began utilizing an even broader multilateral platform in a bid to reestablish itself on the world stage against U.S. attempts to isolate the Islamic Republic.

After the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) wrapped up its two-day ministerial summit in Azerbaijan on Thursday, Tehran appeared well-poised to continue to its diplomatic rally under President Ebrahim Raisi.

"Iran under Raisi is trying to join regional alliances, as it believes that there is a new world order," Saeed Azimi, a political journalist based in Tehran, told Newsweek, "and in this order, multipolarity dominates the unipolarity of the U.S. after the collapse of the USSR."

During the Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union vied for global influence, the NAM emerged in 1961 as a forum for nations seeking to forge a third path. The movement gained traction throughout the decades, with Iran joining upon its Islamic Revolution in 1979, but it struggled to retain its geopolitical weight in the post-Cold War era. Today, however, the NAM is one of several venues in which nations across the Global South, including Iran, are seeking to assert their international presence.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian's participation in the latest NAM event comes in the immediate aftermath of Iran's accession to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a group comprised of China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as amid Tehran's application to join BRICS, an economic coalition also comprised of China, Russia and India, as well as Brazil and South Africa.

Azimi argued that, through such moves, Raisi is looking to send a message to the West as well as his own people at a time when the Islamic Republic was contending with threats both external and internal.

"Ascension to SCO and BRICS will be a political message from Iran to the U.S. and EU, stating that the country can come out of the isolation without reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," Azimi said, referring to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal that has largely collapsed over the resumption of U.S. sanctions and intensified Iranian uranium enrichment after Washington abandoned the accord in 2018.

"Iran's presence in NAM is a part of this show of power," he added, "as well as a publicity stunt for Raisi in Iran to calm the people who are furious over skyrocketing inflation rate."

Tehran is not alone in this endeavor. A number of U.S. partners such as India, currently the chair of both the SCO and the G20, and Saudi Arabia, which resumed ties with Iran as part of a China-brokered deal in March and has also applied for SCO and BRICS partnerships, have emphasized their commitment to "strategic autonomy" in global affairs.

And while Azimi noted that "strategic autonomy is the choice many have made," he argued that "regional and international alliances are still valid" and "you can't possibly reject the influence of NATO on the global stage," nor how "multipolarity is dynamically subject to change, as evident in the Russia-Ukraine war."

As such, he asserted that the latest NAM summit is also "sending a message to the U.S. that the NAM is still very much committed to its origins" rooted in the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia that revolved around the "declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation."

For nations like India and Saudi Arabia, both founding NAM members, New Delhi-based strategic affairs and foreign policy analyst Mohammed Badrul Alam argued that "the reason 'strategic autonomy' is the new flavor" is two-fold.

Firstly, it is "to manage competitive capitalism with the emerging and burgeoning middle-class aspirations more effectively," and, secondly, "to diversify and spread the eggs into several baskets while keeping the core national interests—including strategic partners— intact," he said.

"This dual approach suits these countries to reasonably manage the shifting power equation in the multipolar world," Alam told Newsweek.

When it comes to Tehran's recent global engagements, he said that "Iran is playing the long game to be at a state of strategic advantage by tapping into the window of opportunity being provided by inductions into multilateral bodies such as SCO, BRICS." In this way, Alam said, "benefits accrued can be in both forms, tangible as well as intangible in positioning Iran as a viable power fulcrum in Middle East and Eurasia."

This outlook is not necessarily a new one for Iran, which has long sought to balance East and West, even if boosting ties with China and Russia were now a distinct priority in the absence of Western trade ties due to U.S. sanctions. As Abas Aslani, a senior research fellow at the Tehran-based Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, pointed out, however, Raisi's "neighborhood policy" has produced a concerted effort to engage with not only Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt, Turkey and others with whom Iran's relations have been strained.

"In the recent period," Aslani told Newsweek, "Tehran has prioritized multiple bilateral engagements, which can be facilitated by participating in regional or political mechanisms."

This strategy, compounded with Western fatigue over choosing new battles in the Middle East, has allowed Tehran to outmaneuver Washington's efforts to constrain it, he argued.

"The current international conditions also enable Iran to have more options than the policies imposed by the West," Aslani said. "With crises such as the Ukraine war, any new conflict and crisis in another region would be the last thing the West wants."

"The unsteadiness of the U.S.-centered political and economic structures has attracted American allies to new structures and organizations or the activation of existing independent institutions," he added. "This creates opportunities for greater political and economic interaction and cooperation for actors like Iran."

Such was the case for Iran's intensified engagements with the SCO, BRICS and NAM, all through which Aslani said "Tehran considers utilizing the capacity of regional and international organizations as one of the important fields in advancing its foreign policy."

While the capabilities of the SCO and BRICS to constitute a collective geopolitical bloc have faced international skepticism, especially given the inclusion of members with bitter feuds of their own, even greater doubts have been raised about the capacity of the NAM to act as a united front not least due to its sprawling membership that spans nearly every nation in Africa, most of Asia and a large part of Latin America.

"We acknowledge the skepticism surrounding NAM's relevance in the post-Cold War era, with concerns about its loss of purpose and institutionalization challenges," Niken Supraba, assistant program director of the NAM's Jakarta-based Center for South-South Technical Cooperation (CSSTC), told Newsweek.

"However, the establishment of NAM CSSTC represents a transformative shift towards greater cooperation with developed countries, complementing Official Development Assistance (ODA) efforts," she added. "NAM views newly established organizations by member countries as potential partners, collaborating on joint programs to leverage our resources."

Fundamentally, she said, the NAM "aims to unite developing nations, particularly those striving for independence and self-reliance," and "its primary goal is to provide equal opportunities and an equal role in international affairs."

The CSSTC was founded in 1995 in the wake of the Cold War in order to reinforce the economic dimension of this mission. Since then, it has expanded its scope to "knowledge exchange, expertise sharing, and technical assistance," including through "training programs, expert dispatches, and specialized centers, such as the NAM S&T (Science and Technology) center in India, which foster collaborative research efforts," according to Supraba.

Iran, for its part, also hosts the NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, despite accusations lodged by the U.S. of widespread abuses committed by the Islamic Republic. Iran has rejected such allegations, as have other countries charged with human rights violations by Western countries, including at the recent NAM gathering.

Among them was host Azerbaijan, whose leader, President Ilham Aliyev, took an opportunity during his remarks Wednesday to condemn France for "falsely presenting herself as a defender of human rights and international law," while Paris "still interferes into domestic affairs of other countries."

The remarks were a reference to France's legacy of expressing human rights concerns regarding Baku's role in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, home to an ethnic Armenian breakaway state on territory internationally recognized as being part of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani leader accused France of pursuing "neo-colonialism" in its foreign policy.

"Azerbaijan is very much concerned by the rising tendency towards neo-colonialism," Aliyev said in comments referred to Newsweek by Azerbaijani Ambassador to the U.S. Khazar Ibrahim. "NAM, which was created as a result of the decolonization process, should vigorously combat this shameful legacy of the past and contribute to its full elimination."

Ties between neighbors Azerbaijan and Iran have suffered their own heightened tensions, including in recent months, but Amir-Abdollahian's meeting with Aliyev was one of several interactions geared toward de-escalation on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Just weeks after meeting with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud at the BRICS ministerial in South Africa and the first bilateral meeting of its kind in Tehran in years, Iran's top diplomat sat down with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Salem Al Sabah on Wednesday to discuss resolving a maritime gas field disputed that has fueled tensions for years.

The extent to which this is successful remains to be seen in the long run, however, especially in the fields of trade and resources. Nader Itayim, a Dubai-based editor specializing in Middle East energy politics at Argus Media, highlighted how heated rhetoric from both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia toward Iran's partial claims to the field located in a neutral zone between the three nations in the leadup to the summit "shows that even in these areas, cooperation could prove tricky."

But while he was skeptical of any significant Arab investment in Iran as long as U.S. sanctions remain in place, he argued that joint participation in forums such as the NAM "will only ever help when it comes to boosting cooperation between Iran and its Mideast Gulf Arab neighbors."

"Improving relations with its Arab neighbors has been a priority for this Iranian administration since day one, which explains why it has put so much into its engagements over the past 18 to 24 months," Itayim told Newsweek. "This détente is really the one foreign policy success it can point to."

At the core of this success, he argued, was a common quest for security, particularly for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

"The Emirati economy is so heavily dependent on tourism and its expat community, the smallest semblance of risk or insecurity could do serious damage to its image and economic prospects moving forward—particularly Dubai," Itayim said. "And when it comes to Saudi Arabia, all one must do is look at the kingdom's Vision 2030 and all it plans to invest and accomplish over the coming years."

"Again, to deliver and fully benefit from these ambitious plans, security is vital," he added. "The changes we've seen in Saudi Arabia's foreign policy strategy in recent years underlines that fact."

At a time when conflicts and unrest continued to plague Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East and its periphery, and tensions between Iran and the U.S. have resurfaced in the Persian Gulf, Itayim argued that nations had a mutual interest in bypassing feuds to work toward a more robust security environment.

"A more secure region will benefit the entire region—that has been the overriding message over the past 18 months or so," he said. "So even if they do remain at odds on other issues, there is a clear interest among these countries to compartmentalize those points of dispute, at least for now, to advance others."