This paper examines the place of Southern Africa in late Pahlavi foreign policy, and explores how Iran’s relationships with countries in the region were shaped by its economic interests, particularly related to oil, as well as the politics of race and the Cold War. Iran’s most important relationship in Southern Africa – and arguably in the whole of Africa – was with South Africa. Iran supplied 90 percent of South Africa’s crude oil imports by the middle of the 1970s, had a 12.5 percent share in an oil refinery there, and as a result of a naval agreement, also had a close security relationship with South Africa. However, throughout this period, the shah simultaneously presented himself as a staunch supporter of anti-imperial movements across the continent, and a champion of human rights and racial equality. How then did the shah justify his country’s close ties to the apartheid regime? The paper also investigates Iran’s ties with other countries in the region, for example Mauritius, Madagascar and Seychelles. It explores questions such as: why did Iran reach out to these countries? What types of relationships did Iran have with them? And how did these relationships fit into Iran’s foreign policy objectives in Sub-Saharan Africa? By answering these questions, the paper aims to contribute to broader discussions about Iran’s interactions with the Global South in the late Pahlavi period, how Iran sought to find a position for itself in the world in the era of decolonization and the Cold War, how the shah’s Iran was perceived by these countries, and the opportunities close ties with Iran presented to them. Until recently, the vast majority of scholarship on Iran’s foreign interactions during the late Pahlavi era and early revolutionary period focused on the United States and the Soviet Union, and comparatively little was written on its relations with other countries, in particular those of the Global South. This situation is beginning to change, as an emerging body of scholarship analyses Iran’s global interactions during the Pahlavi period, introducing themes and sources that allow us better to understand Iran’s relationships with both imperial and non-imperial powers. Because the literature on Iran’s relations with Southern Africa is so sparse, the paper incorporates a wide range of primary source materials, including documents from archives in Britain, France and the United States, Iranian newspapers and memoirs.