Following the breakup of the USSR in 1991, the newly independent former Soviet republics each had to chart its own foreign policy course, often from scratch. In this paper, I show that, since the coming to power of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in 1994, Belarus has striven to preserve and build on the former network of alliances built by the Soviet Union in the Middle East and elsewhere. As part of this strategy, aimed at mitigating the effects of isolation by the West and an economic overreliance on Russia, Belarus has established and deepened ties with the former Soviet allies Egypt, Syria and Libya. However, the Belarusian government’s search for alliances was not limited to friends of the former Soviet Union, but eventually diversified to include friendships with Middle Eastern states that had been inimical to the USSR on ideological grounds, such as Iran, Sudan and Turkey. While Belarus has sought Middle Eastern alliances primarily as a means of overcoming its geopolitical isolation, the Middle Eastern countries that have entered into cordial relations with it largely out of economic interests. A notable exception to this pattern, however, is Belarus’s burgeoning relationship with Iran, which has taken on the characteristics of an alliance driven by ideological considerations on either side as much as by economics and geopolitics. In particular, Lukashenka and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad portray themselves – along with Hugo Chávez – as allies in the vanguard of a worldwide anti-systemic resistance. How does the alleged Muslim extremist Ahmadinejad find such significant common ground with the self-described “Orthodox Christian atheist” Lukashenka? Unlike the Russian-Iranian relationship, relations between Iran and Belarus have received virtually no scholarly attention. This paper is based on an analysis of articles on the growth and development of the Iranian-Belarusian partnership that have appeared in the last decade and a half in the Belarusian press, in particular the official Belarus segodnia, as well as the Iranian press, particularly the Tehran Times. I also examine official statements issued by the two governments regarding their relationship. I utilize secondary sources to examine the recent history of the two countries, and to place their relationship in a broader national and international context. I conclude that Ervand Abrahamian’s concept of “Third World populism” is a far more helpful tool in explaining the recent history of Iranian foreign relations – in particular its alliance with Belarus – than labels such as “Islamic fundamentalist theocracy”.