Iran initially tried to win the support of Albanians by taking part in the Kosovo War. There were reports of Iranian combatants there, and Iranian media openly reported on Albanians thanking Iran for its support and expressing a desire for a similar theocratic state, similar to the strategies Iran used to win the support of Bosniaks during the prior Bosnian War. Mohammad Khatami, the president of Iran, had sharply criticized NATO for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999.
As a result of Albania’s allying with the US, tensions between Iran and Albania had already been deteriorating. Iran established the “Koran Foundation of Kosovo” in an effort to persuade Albanians in both Albania and Kosovo to reject secularism and favor a Shi’a theocracy, but this effort was ineffective; Albanian authorities even started to crack down on the foundation.
Iran had refused to acknowledge Kosovo’s independence in 2008 as revenge for the crackdown on Iran-supported parties in Albania and Kosovo as well as the fact that Kosovo was a pro-Western American-backed state that fiercely opposed both Russia and China. The ties went further downhill after Albania agreed to host MEK.
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