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Facing Growing Iranian Threats, Azerbaijan Deepens Ties To Israel
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Published in Analytical Articles
by Robert M. Cutler (05/15/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Iranian legislators in Teheran have drafted a bill calling for
revision of the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay, which divided the multiple
Azerbaijani khanates between the Russian and Persian Empires. While
this cannot be taken wholly seriously, it is a symbol of the
deterioration of bilateral relations. It comes against a background of
worsening rhetoric between Teheran and Baku, which have in the past
extended into subversive actions by Iran on the territory of
Azerbaijan. It is thus in the line of longstanding Iranian threats
against Azerbaijani sovereignty and the government of President Ilham
Aliyev.
BACKGROUND: The Safavid dynasty of Persia ruled the territory of
present-day Azerbaijan during the sixteenth century. In 1603 the
Ottoman Turks occupied the region, and the victories of Russian Tsar
Peter the Great in the early 1700s sealed the fall of Safavid
influence, breaking the territory up into independent and mutually
quarreling khanates. Following further Russo-Persian wars in the early
nineteenth century, the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay confirmed the
ceding of the northern khanates to Russia, splitting historical
Azerbaijan in two. Subsequently, Tsar Nicholas I created the necessary
condition for the situation now known as the Karabakh problem. With
the Treaty of Turkmanchay, he styled himself protector of the
Christians in the Persian Empire, and received them into his own
lands, settling many ethnic Armenians in what is now Nagorno-Karabakh.
The legislative bill in the Iranian Majlis is in line with over a
decade of provocations against Baku and challenges against Azerbaijani
sovereignty. Perhaps the best known of these took place in the summer
of 2001, when Iran deployed military force in the Caspian Sea and
threatened to use it against a BP-led mission intended to explore the
Alov hydrocarbon deposit in the Azerbaijani sector. This mission
included an Azerbaijani vessel, and the Iranian threat forced a
cessation of work that continues to this day. The Iranian name for the
deposit is Alborz, which perhaps by no coincidence is also the name of
the country's first deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig, launched
four years ago in the Caspian Sea.
More recently, in 2007 fifteen Iranians and Azerbaijanis were
convicted of spying on state oil facilities and conspiring to
overthrow the government in Baku. In 2008, a plot by Hezbollah
operatives to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Baku with Iranian
assistance was exposed and thwarted. In late 2011 the Azerbaijani
journalist Rafig Tagi, who had since 2005 been the subject of a
death-penalty fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani, was murdered
in a knife attack in Baku days after publishing an article that
criticized Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for discrediting
Islam. And in early 2012, Azerbaijani police exposed and arrested
members of yet another terrorist cell created by the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards together with the Lebanese Hezbollah.
IMPLICATIONS: The southern nineteenth-century khanates not absorbed
into the Russian Empire are referred to as Iranian Azerbaijan, or
sometimes by northern irredentists as `Southern Azerbaijan.' They now
constitute four contemporary northwestern Iranian provinces that
include over 10 percent of the country's population, which is itself
variously estimated to count between one-quarter and one-third ethnic
Azerbaijanis. Perhaps in reply to the Majlis initiative seeking
revision of the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Azerbaijan's foreign minister,
Elmar Mammadyarov, paid the first-ever high-profile visit by any of
Baku's cabinet ministers to Israel in late April. There are historic
and cultural links that undergird the informal upgrading of bilateral
diplomatic relations. Sephardic Jews have reputedly lived in the
mountains of Azerbaijan since close to 600 BC, and the region was a
relatively safe refuge for Ashkenazi Jews fleeing Russia from the
German invasion during the Second World War. Such a trip was in any
case overdue in view of the depth and breadth of bilateral relations
for such a long time.
Experts estimate that Azerbaijan supplies at least one-third, perhaps
as much as two-fifths of Israel's oil (roughly 20 million barrels),
and trade turnover between the two has reached US$ 4 billion per year.
Azerbaijan is reported to have purchased US$ 1.6 billion in arms from
Israel in 2012, and Israeli firms are cooperating with the relevant
Azerbaijani ministries in advising on the Azerbaijani manufacture of
military weapons. Apart from that, Azerbaijan has for a long time been
a main link of the Northern Distribution Network, which supplies
equipment to NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Iran has accused it of
preparing to allow Israel to conduct military operations against
Teheran. Hard evidence to support this accusation has been lacking,
but it is important to note that Azerbaijan's present-day ties with
Israel are not merely an artifact of state interests. They reflect the
historical experience of Azerbaijan, where the nation-building
antecedents even in the nineteenth century were tied to
anti-clericalism. So it should also not be a surprise that the
spectrum of Azerbaijani revolutionary parties in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries replicated the political variety seen in
Europe and were influenced by European ideologies.
Tehran's threats against Baku are driven not only by Azerbaijan's
foreign policy orientation but also by its status as a post-Soviet
state with a majority Shi'ite population but secular Muslim identity.
As such, it gives the lie to the Iranian regime's theocratic doctrines
and eschatological pretensions. Iran pretends to give formal
diplomatic support for Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh,
but its sponsorship of actions against Azerbaijani sovereignty as
mentioned above reveals its real preferences. Indeed, Iran has greatly
deepened and broadened its relations with Armenia in the last six
years, opening a crucial gas pipeline to Armenia that has been an
energy lifeline, constructing two hydroelectric plants on their common
border, and building highway and railroad links. By contrast,
relations between Iran and Azerbaijan are already rather poor, and
there is little that Teheran can do to prevent Baku from deepening its
relations with Jerusalem. Because there are so many current problems
and so much mutual distrust, relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are
unlikely to normalize even after the upcoming presidential elections
in Iran, regardless of which faction of the Teheran elite is able to
claim victory.
CONCLUSIONS: Iran's threats affect not just Azerbaijan but also
Turkey, since Turkey's current prosperity is due in significant part
to its low-cost imports of natural gas from Azerbaijan for domestic
use, as well as its role as a transit country for Azerbaijani oil
(Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline) and, soon, gas (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum
and Trans-Anatolian pipelines) to European and world markets. With its
investment in Turkey's petrochemical sector, Azerbaijan is set to
become the largest foreign investor in the country before the end of
the present decade. Although Mammadyarov's visit to Israel was not
`official', he met with the president, prime minister, defense
minister and other senior officials in the country for intensive
discussions. At a news conference after the trip was over he concluded
that it was only `a matter of time' before Azerbaijan opened an
embassy in Israel. Official Baku does not credit Teheran's accusations
against Israel that it is seeking to throw a wrench into
Azerbaijani-Iranian relations. On the contrary, Azerbaijan is said to
have refrained from high-level visits to Israel in the past in order
not to antagonize Iran. Mammadyarov's visit may therefore, in future
retrospect, be seen as a turning point.
AUTHOR'S BIO: Dr. Robert M Cutler is senior research fellow in the
Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton
University, Canada.
http://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/12730-facing-growing-iranian-ties-azerbaijan-deepens-ties-to-israel.html
From: A. Papazian
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Published in Analytical Articles
by Robert M. Cutler (05/15/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Iranian legislators in Teheran have drafted a bill calling for
revision of the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay, which divided the multiple
Azerbaijani khanates between the Russian and Persian Empires. While
this cannot be taken wholly seriously, it is a symbol of the
deterioration of bilateral relations. It comes against a background of
worsening rhetoric between Teheran and Baku, which have in the past
extended into subversive actions by Iran on the territory of
Azerbaijan. It is thus in the line of longstanding Iranian threats
against Azerbaijani sovereignty and the government of President Ilham
Aliyev.
BACKGROUND: The Safavid dynasty of Persia ruled the territory of
present-day Azerbaijan during the sixteenth century. In 1603 the
Ottoman Turks occupied the region, and the victories of Russian Tsar
Peter the Great in the early 1700s sealed the fall of Safavid
influence, breaking the territory up into independent and mutually
quarreling khanates. Following further Russo-Persian wars in the early
nineteenth century, the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay confirmed the
ceding of the northern khanates to Russia, splitting historical
Azerbaijan in two. Subsequently, Tsar Nicholas I created the necessary
condition for the situation now known as the Karabakh problem. With
the Treaty of Turkmanchay, he styled himself protector of the
Christians in the Persian Empire, and received them into his own
lands, settling many ethnic Armenians in what is now Nagorno-Karabakh.
The legislative bill in the Iranian Majlis is in line with over a
decade of provocations against Baku and challenges against Azerbaijani
sovereignty. Perhaps the best known of these took place in the summer
of 2001, when Iran deployed military force in the Caspian Sea and
threatened to use it against a BP-led mission intended to explore the
Alov hydrocarbon deposit in the Azerbaijani sector. This mission
included an Azerbaijani vessel, and the Iranian threat forced a
cessation of work that continues to this day. The Iranian name for the
deposit is Alborz, which perhaps by no coincidence is also the name of
the country's first deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig, launched
four years ago in the Caspian Sea.
More recently, in 2007 fifteen Iranians and Azerbaijanis were
convicted of spying on state oil facilities and conspiring to
overthrow the government in Baku. In 2008, a plot by Hezbollah
operatives to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Baku with Iranian
assistance was exposed and thwarted. In late 2011 the Azerbaijani
journalist Rafig Tagi, who had since 2005 been the subject of a
death-penalty fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani, was murdered
in a knife attack in Baku days after publishing an article that
criticized Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for discrediting
Islam. And in early 2012, Azerbaijani police exposed and arrested
members of yet another terrorist cell created by the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards together with the Lebanese Hezbollah.
IMPLICATIONS: The southern nineteenth-century khanates not absorbed
into the Russian Empire are referred to as Iranian Azerbaijan, or
sometimes by northern irredentists as `Southern Azerbaijan.' They now
constitute four contemporary northwestern Iranian provinces that
include over 10 percent of the country's population, which is itself
variously estimated to count between one-quarter and one-third ethnic
Azerbaijanis. Perhaps in reply to the Majlis initiative seeking
revision of the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Azerbaijan's foreign minister,
Elmar Mammadyarov, paid the first-ever high-profile visit by any of
Baku's cabinet ministers to Israel in late April. There are historic
and cultural links that undergird the informal upgrading of bilateral
diplomatic relations. Sephardic Jews have reputedly lived in the
mountains of Azerbaijan since close to 600 BC, and the region was a
relatively safe refuge for Ashkenazi Jews fleeing Russia from the
German invasion during the Second World War. Such a trip was in any
case overdue in view of the depth and breadth of bilateral relations
for such a long time.
Experts estimate that Azerbaijan supplies at least one-third, perhaps
as much as two-fifths of Israel's oil (roughly 20 million barrels),
and trade turnover between the two has reached US$ 4 billion per year.
Azerbaijan is reported to have purchased US$ 1.6 billion in arms from
Israel in 2012, and Israeli firms are cooperating with the relevant
Azerbaijani ministries in advising on the Azerbaijani manufacture of
military weapons. Apart from that, Azerbaijan has for a long time been
a main link of the Northern Distribution Network, which supplies
equipment to NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Iran has accused it of
preparing to allow Israel to conduct military operations against
Teheran. Hard evidence to support this accusation has been lacking,
but it is important to note that Azerbaijan's present-day ties with
Israel are not merely an artifact of state interests. They reflect the
historical experience of Azerbaijan, where the nation-building
antecedents even in the nineteenth century were tied to
anti-clericalism. So it should also not be a surprise that the
spectrum of Azerbaijani revolutionary parties in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries replicated the political variety seen in
Europe and were influenced by European ideologies.
Tehran's threats against Baku are driven not only by Azerbaijan's
foreign policy orientation but also by its status as a post-Soviet
state with a majority Shi'ite population but secular Muslim identity.
As such, it gives the lie to the Iranian regime's theocratic doctrines
and eschatological pretensions. Iran pretends to give formal
diplomatic support for Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh,
but its sponsorship of actions against Azerbaijani sovereignty as
mentioned above reveals its real preferences. Indeed, Iran has greatly
deepened and broadened its relations with Armenia in the last six
years, opening a crucial gas pipeline to Armenia that has been an
energy lifeline, constructing two hydroelectric plants on their common
border, and building highway and railroad links. By contrast,
relations between Iran and Azerbaijan are already rather poor, and
there is little that Teheran can do to prevent Baku from deepening its
relations with Jerusalem. Because there are so many current problems
and so much mutual distrust, relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are
unlikely to normalize even after the upcoming presidential elections
in Iran, regardless of which faction of the Teheran elite is able to
claim victory.
CONCLUSIONS: Iran's threats affect not just Azerbaijan but also
Turkey, since Turkey's current prosperity is due in significant part
to its low-cost imports of natural gas from Azerbaijan for domestic
use, as well as its role as a transit country for Azerbaijani oil
(Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline) and, soon, gas (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum
and Trans-Anatolian pipelines) to European and world markets. With its
investment in Turkey's petrochemical sector, Azerbaijan is set to
become the largest foreign investor in the country before the end of
the present decade. Although Mammadyarov's visit to Israel was not
`official', he met with the president, prime minister, defense
minister and other senior officials in the country for intensive
discussions. At a news conference after the trip was over he concluded
that it was only `a matter of time' before Azerbaijan opened an
embassy in Israel. Official Baku does not credit Teheran's accusations
against Israel that it is seeking to throw a wrench into
Azerbaijani-Iranian relations. On the contrary, Azerbaijan is said to
have refrained from high-level visits to Israel in the past in order
not to antagonize Iran. Mammadyarov's visit may therefore, in future
retrospect, be seen as a turning point.
AUTHOR'S BIO: Dr. Robert M Cutler is senior research fellow in the
Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton
University, Canada.
http://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/12730-facing-growing-iranian-ties-azerbaijan-deepens-ties-to-israel.html
From: A. Papazian