The regime has a multifaceted policy for augmenting its international influence. Its elements range from public to covert, take shape in different arenas, and are geared toward different constituencies. Tehran’s most obvious public campaign to increase its global leverage plays out in international organizations. In the United Nations, Iranian officials have worked assiduously to create ad hoc coalitions against the United States and Israel, drawing on support from a number of developing and Muslim countries. Iran’s recent failed attempt to join the UN Security Council was a clear manifestation of this effort. Anti-American sentiment has been similarly employed to stave off critical reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Tehran has relied on China and Russia to block Security Council resolutions on the nuclear issue.

These opportunistic and often ideologically incongruous coalitions are bolstered through the dogged cultivation of bilateral and regional ties. Iran has attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which consists of China, Russia, and four Central Asian states. It has had more luck building an economic relationship with China, thanks largely to that country’s hunger for oil and gas resources. India, which competes with China for energy imports and has a tradition of Cold War–era nonalignment, has also been relatively receptive to Tehran’s overtures. The regime has built economic and political ties with Russia in part by drawing Moscow into its nuclear energy program, purchasing Russian weapons systems, and voicing early support for Russia’s August 2008 invasion of Georgia.

Reaching somewhat farther afield, the Iranian regime has aligned itself with Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, promising large investments and joint ventures that are typically based on political expediency rather than real economic benefits. A prime example has been the establishment of direct flights between Tehran and Caracas, which often carry only a handful of passengers. These long-distance relationships allow the leaders in each country to claim that they have cleverly outflanked attempts to isolate them internationally.

The Islamic Republic has made efforts in recent years to improve its relations with other Muslim countries in the Middle East, even suggesting that it should join Arab blocs and form a security organization with its Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf. However, this prong of its foreign policy is seriously undercut by its long-standing support for radical and violent Islamist organizations across the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Shiite militias in Iraq, and multiple factions in Afghanistan. Such support allows the regime to portray itself as the leader of the Islamic world in a struggle against its enemies, and regular conferences of these types of organizations are hosted in Tehran to amplify the message.

In addition to its ties with foreign governments and militant groups, the regime makes direct appeals to foreign audiences by sponsoring television and radio networks aimed at the English- and Arab-speaking worlds, including Press TV and Al-Alam. Moreover, the Iranian state has used symbolic gestures to spectacular effect, for example by pledging $1 billion to help Lebanese Shiites rebuild their homes after the war with Israel, or by offering millions of dollars in free electricity and other services to the Shiite parts of Iraq. Ahmadinejad’s many rants against Israel must be seen in this context, as part of a larger effort to claim an international leadership role and win the sympathy of foreign populations who are frustrated with their own government’s stances. Many in Iran’s reformist movement and even more in the secular opposition have voiced their anger at what they see as the wasteful foreign disbursal of funds that would be better spent on Iran’s own pressing economic troubles.

Aspects of the regime’s public outreach have drawn the ire of some in the Muslim world. Recent calls by al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni scholar and television personality, to resist what is characterized as the Shiite invasion of Sunni societies, are a notable sign of this backlash against Tehran’s propaganda.

However, it must be remembered that the Iranian regime’s well-funded international strategy serves multiple purposes. It helps to solidify Iran’s role as a leader of the radical Islamist movement, enhances its alliances with important world and regional powers, and prevents the formation of a united front against it in international forums. But it also drums up security crises and fans hostility abroad to keep the minds of ordinary Iranians from focusing on their own domestic travails and gross official mismanagement. In this sense the conflicting goals and sometimes theatrical quality of Iran’s foreign ventures are less problematic from the regime’s perspective, as they only enhance the potency of the distraction.