While the world watches Hormuz and the Red Sea, West Africa’s fracturing mining sector is opening seams that Iran and Hezbollah are well placed to exploit.

Iran’s war is no longer confined to the waters it can physically threaten.

Since the war began, Tehran has used the Strait of Hormuz and threatened maritime pressure through the Red Sea — including the Bab el-Mandeb, the gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden — to project its reach far beyond Iran’s immediate geography.

Recent reports of Iranian recruitment in Thailand and Indonesia to target the Malacca Strait — linking the Indian and Pacific oceans — point to a broader strategy of expanding Tehran’s maritime pressure far beyond the Middle East. That raises a less obvious question: where else does Iran have access to the networks that connect resources, money, ports and people?

The answer may lie not in another Middle Eastern chokepoint, but on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean — in the Gulf of Guinea, the Atlantic coastline stretching from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana through Togo, Benin and Nigeria to Cameroon and beyond.

In June, six West African states — Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — launched the Combined Maritime Task Force (CMTF), a new African-led maritime-security initiative covering one of the world’s most strategically important coastlines. Its mandate includes piracy, trafficking, illegal fishing and terrorism. But the maritime-security problem may begin much farther inland — in the mines, companies, financial networks and political structures that feed the coast.

And that is where the Gulf of Guinea becomes interesting to Iran.

The Gulf of Guinea is not new territory for Iran’s most important proxy. For years, US authorities have documented Hezbollah’s financial, recruitment and commercial networks across West Africa. In Sierra Leone, Hezbollah liaison Ali Ibrahim al-Watfa ran a fundraising cell in Freetown and coordinated transfers to Lebanon. In Côte d’Ivoire, Hezbollah operative Ali Ahmad Chehade worked on recruitment and travel. In 2018, the US Treasury identified a commercial network controlled by Hezbollah financier Ali Muhammad Qansu: Star Trade Ghana in Accra, Blue Lagoon Group and Kanso Fishing Agency in Sierra Leone, and Golden Fish Liberia, Dolphin Trading and Sky Trade........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)