Raisi extends Tebboune an invitation to visit Iran: "It's hard to imagine it happening soon"
The Algerian government is determined to strengthen its foreign policy in the coming months. It intends to flex its muscles and raise its profile in a context that is more than favourable in view of the energy needs of Europe, the main destination of its gas exports, which, according to the director of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Miloud Medjelled, will break the record in 2022 with a volume of 56 billion cubic metres.
After a turbulent period internally, marked by the outbreak of Hirak, the mass protests against former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika that shook the foundations of the regime and forced his resignation, and immediately afterwards by the COVID-19-induced health crisis, the Maghreb country wants to make up for lost time, while taking advantage of the wind in its sails.
At the El Mouradia presidential residence, there is no shortage of proposals. Abdelmadjid Tebboune's agenda for the first months of 2023 is overflowing. The leaders of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, respectively, are anxiously awaiting the visit of the Algerian leader, whose strategic influence has gained in importance in this impasse caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They are not alone. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has joined the group.
In a recent telephone conversation between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and his Algerian counterpart Ramtane Lamamra, the Persian diplomat conveyed Raisi's invitation to Tebboune for a state visit to the country. "We are ready to hold a meeting of the Joint Economic Committee in the near future," Amirabdollahian told the veteran Algerian diplomat.
Tebboune has never set foot in Iran as head of state, but he is a great connoisseur of the country. In 2002, after holding the Habitat and Urbanism portfolio - and long before becoming Prime Minister - he represented the Algerian presidency on a series of diplomatic missions abroad at the express decision of Bouteflika, who placed him under his wing. During this brief period, Tebboune was stationed in Iran.
The last Algerian president to visit the country was the late Bouteflika. He did so in 2008 on a two-day state visit where he met with then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The former mayor of Tehran, a leading exponent of the regime's hardline wing, met Bouteflika again two years later during a technical stopover at Algiers' Houari Boumedienne International Airport.
"Relations between Algeria and Iran could be described as cordial at the diplomatic level, but rather limited at the strategic, economic and political levels," Algerian analyst Zine Ghebouli told Atalayar. "In the past, there were attempts to strengthen these ties, but they remained timid efforts without concrete results".
The analyst asserts that "Algeria wishes to maintain its strategy of non-alignment and would therefore only accept such a visit if it does not entail strategic meanings that could complicate the dynamics with the main international and regional actors". It is precisely this red line that is being drawn by France and the United States, actors with whom Algiers has embarked on a new rapprochement. Washington, in particular, has been exerting pressure on the Algerian regime through its ambassador and the White House Middle East and North Africa coordinator, Brett McGurk, whom Tebboune received a few weeks ago.
"It is difficult to imagine this visit happening soon for a number of considerations, including the tense geopolitical environment," Ghebouli told this newspaper. "I imagine this visit would take place after Moscow's trip, but that will largely depend on Algeria's relationship with other partners".
Tehran's dispatch to Moscow of Persian-made Shahed drones and Islamic Revolutionary Guard trainers, executed in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine, coupled with the brutal repression deployed by the Ayatollahs' regime against civil society in the internal uprisings following the death in police custody of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, is making the situation tense. In this context, Western countries have decided to tighten sanctions against Iran.
However, should the visit finally take place, it would not be the first time that Raisi and Tebboune have met. The two men met briefly at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Doha in February. The Iranian and Algerian leaders used the occasion to discuss global and regional issues, but made little progress on their bilateral agenda.
The Algerian leader has been perceived as a supporter of rapprochement with Iran, but has not explicitly taken sides in the regional rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh, which has festered since the rupture of bilateral relations in 2016. Indeed, in a recent interview with Algeria's pro-government media, Tebboune described relations between Algeria and Saudi Arabia as 'very good', although he acknowledged that there is some friction.
