As pressure mounts in the Strait of Hormuz, amid one of the most serious escalations in the Middle East in decades, commentary and analysis have focused on familiar indicators, such as maritime chokepoints, oil markets and shifting regional military alliances. Far less international attention has been directed beyond the conflict zone.

Africa, particularly, has received little scrutiny in this context, despite its long‑standing role as a transit and facilitation hub for illicit trade and financial activity linked to Middle East conflicts and sanctions regimes. This oversight is significant.

When a state such as Iran, whose survival depends on criminal infrastructure, comes under sustained military pressure, illicit networks do not simply disappear. They fragment, adapt and seek new partnerships, expanding into jurisdictions where oversight is weakest and the gap between formal institutions and effective scrutiny widest. And Africa is at the heart of this expansion.

Sanctioned systems under pressure

Iran has survived decades of Western sanctions by building an economy based on institutional deception. Oil is moved through ship-to-ship transfers that conceal its origin and ownership. Drug networks use Iranian-linked intermediaries to access distribution channels. Weapons reach proxy forces across continents. Front companies, exchange houses and commodity traders process billions while obscuring the beneficiaries. This is not incidental corruption, but an institutionalized criminal methodology.

Military action will not put an end to these activities. When disrupted, criminal networks break up, diversify their routes, and cultivate partnerships in jurisdictions where regulation and enforcement are weak but financial access remains viable.

For years, Africa has served as a transit and facilitation territory for drug trafficking and sanctions-evasion activities such as oil-related shipping and financial intermediation, connecting Iran to markets in the Middle East and Europe, and increasingly on the continent itself. Now, however, it risks becoming a relocation zone for illicit infrastructure.

The convergence of illicit markets

Gold illustrates this potential of this most clearly. It absorbs illicit value from the formal financial system and releases it elsewhere, with almost no traceability. Once melted and recast, its provenance disappears. For a state under sanctions looking to convert revenue into usable assets, while evading Western financial surveillance, gold is close to ideal.

For years, large volumes of artisanal gold mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic have been transported through Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, Kenya, Chad and Burundi to Dubai. It is estimated that 95 per cent of the gold smuggled from East and Central Africa ends up in the Emirati city. It arrives without credible documentation, is given official certification and emerges as a legitimate product.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also long been recognized as a key centre for illicit Iranian financial activity, also known as ‘shadow banking’. Exchange houses in the UAE process billions of dollars annually on behalf of companies with ties to sanctioned Iranian entities. In addition, Dubai-based firms have repeatedly been identified as facilitators of the recent surge in illicit Iranian-linked cryptocurrency transactions.

Thus, Dubai operates as a convergence point for two distinct illicit flows – the trade in the physical commodity of African conflict gold, and Iranian sanctions-evasion activity – that leverage the same channels and infrastructure.

Kenya provides an example of one side of this system in action. Despite negligible domestic production, the country functions as a major transit hub for artisanal gold. Tonnes of the precious metal are moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan through Nairobi, with documentation presenting it as Kenyan in origin, while the beneficial ownership remains obscure.

This gap between compliance and oversight creates a financial environment ripe for systematic exploitation by networks under pressure. The imbalance has existed in East Africa’s gold trade for years. What is changing now is the incentive to exploit it, as conditions conducive to the convergence of illicit markets begin to take shape.

Intelligence fragmented by design

Africa’s regional security bodies are well aware that Iran-linked sanctions-evasion networks operate on the continent. The problem, however, is that this kind of financial activity does not resemble traditional organized crime. It does not reveal itself through arrests or violence. Instead, it moves through low-visibility exchange transactions and cryptocurrency wallets, as well as routine paperwork such as company registrations and export certificates.

In the field of African financial intelligence, shortcomings are institutional. Financial crime units, commodity regulators and law enforcement agencies tend to operate in isolation. A transaction that appears unremarkable to a customs official in Entebbe, for instance, could contribute to a financial intelligence picture being compiled in Nairobi or Algiers. Without feedback loops, however, the picture cannot be completed.

This is precisely the type of threat that the African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (AFRIPOL) was designed to address. However, tracking sanctions evasion through commodity markets requires the simultaneous integration of financial intelligence, trade data and law enforcement. This level of coordination is still not standard practice.

Three actions are required. First, AFRIPOL should direct financial intelligence units in East and Central Africa to brief analysts on sanctions-evasion indicators within the regional gold trade. Patterns will become apparent if experts know where to look. Second, regional cooperation frameworks should reclassify sanctions evasion as an organized crime priority, rather than allowing it to remain a foreign policy issue delegated to individual states. The corridors through which this illicit activity operates overlap with those used by other forms of transnational crime, and maintaining institutional separation only serves the networks that exploit them.

Third, sustained analytical focus is required on the commercial, financial and commodity pathways linking African markets to the UAE. This work should be coordinated through regional mechanisms, such as junction analysis, rather than framed as adversarial monitoring. Tracking this movement would provide valuable insight into how geopolitical pressure can translate into organized crime risk on the continent.

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has generated extensive analysis of military strategy, nuclear programmes and regional alliances. The consequences for organized crime, however, have received far less attention. The potential impact on Africa, almost none. It is a vulnerability the continent can ill afford. The conditions for the convergence of illicit markets are already in place, and regional law enforcement leaders will need to act before emerging dynamics consolidate into long-term corridors.