How the Islamic Republic’s Exported-Revolution Package Comes with an Unlisted Clause

 Bread, Scholarships… and Children?

 How the Islamic Republic’s Exported-Revolution Package Comes with an Unlisted Clause

Tehran’s educational diplomacy—offering free tuition, boarding and scholarships to students from Africa and the developing world—has become a lesser-noticed conduit for ideological export. But another dimension of the scheme is now surfacing: children born to foreign students and clerics, whose legal status and recognition often remain unresolved.

The Islamic Republic has long sought “strategic depth” in Africa and the wider global south, building networks of foreign students, clerics and educational institutions. One international religious university affiliated with its institutions claims tens of thousands of foreign enrolments, with many students arriving from less-developed countries.

In Africa and elsewhere, the pattern is familiar: offer a scholarship, lodging, perhaps cultural integration—then send someone home or into the field as a “missionary of ideology.” What happens, though, when the student marries or has children during that period? Long-form reporting rarely follows the downstream generation.

Those children often exist in a grey zone—born while the parent is abroad, or raised in the host country with limited parental recognition. Official statistics remain scarce, and while public-policy analysts note the phenomenon, they rarely find systematic data on “children of foreign clerics/students” in the host country’s registers.

The irony is sharp: the package marketed as “free education + ideological export” quietly includes lives that will require rights, registration, identity—yet the service-agreement stops at enrolment and ends at graduation, if that. For those children, the cost of “free tuition” may turn into an identity deficit.

Conclusion:

If the Islamic Republic is serious about exporting its revolution via education and cultural influence, it must also take responsibility for the unintended dependents that arrive with the shipment: children. Without legal recognition, social support and long-term planning, the shade promised by the ideological tree may turn out measly when the bread runs out.

— Journalist | Association of Environmental-Journalism Supporters

“Environment is life’s concern… ✴ When there is no bread, no tree gives shade.”

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