Unazungumzia huyu Iran anaekudai matrillion ya helaaa au
View attachment 1823454
On Iran & Tanzania.
Iran is another US fear over Zanzibar
With regard to Tanzania, the United States has had, over the last few years, two main concerns. The first is a fear of Shia ‘extremists’ influencing the country’s Muslims, and the second is uneasiness about Tanzania’s stand over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. In their efforts to get Tanzania to toe the US line at the United Nations, we have seen US diplomats cajoling and threatening behind the scenes while Tanzanian politicians respond by capitulating or trying to explain their actions without giving offence.
In January 2006, for example, the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam cabled Washington that Ambassador Liberata Mulamula, head of the Multilateral Division of Tanzania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, believed:
that discussion on referring the Iran situation to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) needs to wait until the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has met and made a formal recommendation. Since Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) …. Preemptive actions not within the NPT parameters could possibly provoke Iran to withdraw from the NPT, as occurred with the Democratic Peoples republic of Korea in 2003. (US Embassy, 2006a)
It further reported that Mulamula had said, clearly because she was not entirely happy about the domineering US approach, that ‘the GOT [Government of Tanzania], currently chair of the UNSC, be kept apprised of developments in the USG [US Government] approach, including the next steps we intend to take. “No surprises; please let us know what you are planning to do.”’ Another cable to Washington a couple of years later, in December 2007, revealed deputy chief of mission (DCM) Purnell Delly chiding Tanzania’s deputy foreign minister Seif Ali Iddi that ‘if nuclear issues had not been an issue during the recent trip [of Vice President Shein] to Tehran, then they should have been’, and asking for a public statement ‘urging Iran to cease its enrichment program and fully cooperate with the IAEA’. Iddi replied that Tanzania had in fact insisted to the govern-ment of Iran that ‘they should come clean’ and also that Tanzania had been in debt-relief discussions with the government of Iran (US Embassy, 2007b).
Tanzania still has unpaid bilateral debts to Iran, which has yet to provide debt relief (Munte, 2012).
The secret cables from US diplomats in Dar es Salaam on the subject of Iran underline their faith in Tanzania’s current president, Jakaya Kikwete. For example, in January 2009 chargé d’affaires Larry André recorded his dismay about defence minister Hussein Ali Mwinyi’s visit to Tehran and the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) regarding sharing of military and defence expertise. But he also noted also that according to home minister Lawrence Masha, not only did the MOU not ‘represent a shift in Tanzania’s relationship with Iran or the acquisition of military weapons or equipment’, such a policy shift ‘would have required approval by an interagency body chaired by President Kikwete’ (US Embassy, 2009j). Jakaya Kikwete, as we shall see, is the United States’s man, perhaps more willing to do their bidding than any of his predecessors.
