Echoes of war across the South
Caucasus By Nicholas Clayton
TBILISI, Georgia - As the standoff over
Iran's nuclear program intensifies, South Caucasus
leaders are pondering contingencies since the
consequences of open conflict or prolonged
tensions are potentially serious for all three
nations.
Over the past several years, Iran
has become an increasingly influential player in
the South Caucasus as Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Georgia have each sought to diversify their
economic and political ties away from their
traditional alliances - none more so than Armenia,
which now relies on Iran as a major trading
partner and investor.
However, with
tensions on the rise in the Persian Gulf, and with
threats by Iran to disrupt oil supplies passing
through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for
the sanctions that have been slapped on
it by various countries
over its uranium-enrichment activities, South
Caucasus capitals are pondering what role they
would play should the standoff get hot.
While some analysts see opportunity for
the region, others worry the three small countries
could get pulled into an unpredictable conflict.
Out of the three, Armenia is the most
concerned with preserving the status quo, said
Sergey Minasyan, head of the Political Studies
Department at the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan,
the capital and largest city of Armenia. Minasyan
said Armenia's relationship with Iran had been "a
constant dynamic" since its 1991 independence.
Landlocked Armenia has been geographically
isolated since its conflict with Azerbaijan over
the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the
early 1990s, during which Turkey also cut ties and
closed its border with Armenia in support of its
Turkic Azeri brethren.
At the time,
despite their ideological differences, the Islamic
Republic backed Christian Armenia over Muslim
Azerbaijan and, along with Russia, has been a
source of important political support.
Furthermore, about one-third of Armenia's
trade passes through Iranian territory. Armenia's
only alternatives are land routes passing through
Georgia to Russia and the Black Sea, however,
heavy snows and avalanche threats regularly close
the Armenia-Georgia and Georgia-Russia border
crossings.
Iran has also been a key
investor in Armenian business and infrastructure,
feeding the country natural gas through a recently
completed pipeline and an oil pipeline is in the
works. Yerevan views these links as key to
preventing a near total dependence on Russia for
commerce.
In its 2011 report, "Without
Illusions", the Yerevan-based Civilitas Foundation
said that both the Karabakh war and the supply
disruptions caused by the 2008 Russia-Georgia war
proved that Armenia's "only reliable access to the
world was through Iran".
Minasyan said
Armenia had also served as a "proxy" for Iran in
developing business and political contacts in ways
that bypass its official isolation.
Still,
Minasyan said that amid the occasionally violent
stalemate with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh,
the biggest consequences for Armenia of a weakened
or preoccupied Iran would be political, not
economic.
"For the medium term, it would
be possible to replace that trade using Georgian
routes. But the more important - the more
dangerous - would be the geopolitical results of
closing the border if something happened in Iran.
On the other hand, another very important issue is
that not only Armenia is afraid of the possible
consequences of a new crisis with Iran. For
Azerbaijan, it's also a problem. Some experts are
thinking that we will have a crisis in Karabakh if
something happens in Iran, but politicians and
experts in Azerbaijan are more afraid of that
outcome than in Armenia," he said.
Indeed,
Azerbaijan's rocky relationship with Iran has hit
an historic low in recent months. Iran has long
warned Azerbaijan against exploiting energy
resources near Iran's Caspian waters, and, in
2001, used military force to halt a BP-sponsored
project near the dividing line.
Since then, the two have traded barbs over
ideological differences related to Azerbaijan's
stolidly secular observance of Islam, and Iran's
devotion to theocratic Shi'ite governance. Iran
also worries that Azerbaijan might play on the
discontent among Iran's sizable, but repressed
ethnic Azeri minority.
Last month,
Azerbaijani government websites were hit by a wave
a cyber-attacks, which were responded to in turn
with attacks against Iranian state websites. Then,
on January 25, Baku announced it had foiled an
Iranian plot to assassinate the Israeli ambassador
to Azerbaijan and attack a Jewish religious school
in the country.
The suspects were captured
after one allegedly met with his handlers in
northern Iran and was promised US$160,000 for the
mission. The capture came days after top Iranian
officials had promised retribution for the
assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear
scientist, and bore a striking resemblance to
Iran's alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador
to the United States.
Iran regularly
accuses Azerbaijan of collaborating militarily
with both the US and Israel.
After the
nuclear scientist was killed, an intelligence
official in Tehran was quoted as saying, "None of
those who ordered these attacks should feel safe
anywhere."
Stephen Blank, a research
professor at the United States Army War College,
said that the threats Iran regularly made to
Azerbaijan should be taken seriously, including
those saying that the country would be "targeted
and destroyed" if it allowed the US or it's allies
to use Azerbaijani territory or air bases for an
attack against Iran.
Azerbaijani airspace
is already a key link in the Northern Distribution
Network supplying North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and coalition forces in
Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan has signed a number of
defense deals with Israel, but none of these
arrangements were directed against Iran thus far,
Blank said.
That may not matter, however.
"I think Iran is driven by a different
calculus. I don't want to leave anyone with the
impression that we are dealing with people who are
deranged, because they're not. But [...] Iran is
driven by this kind of obsession of anti-Semitism
and anti-Sunni thinking and I think it manifests
itself in their policy," Blank said. "Second, they
have discovered that terrorism is an instrument
that works."
Lincoln Mitchell, a professor
at Columbia University's School of International
and Public Affairs, said, on the contrary, that
the region would stand to benefit from a
US-Iranian escalation because it "puts [the South
Caucasus countries] in the driver's seat,
particularly Azerbaijan, with its relationship
with the US".
"Azerbaijan plays a
make-or-break role in this, and Azerbaijan can
make any attempt by the United States to do
anything in Iran extremely difficult, or it can
make it considerably easier. So, the growing
tension between Iran and the United States gives
far more leverage - particularly to Azerbaijan -
than they have now," he said.
Mitchell
said that in increasing its utility to the US,
Azerbaijan could alleviate Western pressure on
Baku over democracy and human-rights issues.
Georgia, while it does not share a border
with Iran, may also come into play.
Since
coming to power in the 2003 "Rose" revolution,
President Mikheil Saakashvili has placed NATO
membership at the forefront of his foreign policy
agenda. After Georgia's brief war with Russia in
2008, those aspirations appeared to be dashed, but
Saakashvili has not given up hope, deploying as
many as 1,700 soldiers in Afghanistan's most
violent province as a part of the NATO war effort.
However, Georgia has also sought to
strengthen its ties with Iran since the war,
signing a visa-free travel agreement with the
Islamic Republic and opening up greater economic,
academic and commercial links in various
agreements with Tehran.
Still, Mitchell,
who worked as the chief of party at the National
Democratic Institute's office in Georgia from
2002-2004 and has authored a book on the
Saakashvili regime, said that Georgia would likely
acquiesce to any requests by Washington to use
Georgian territory in support of American
operations against Iran.
In an election
year, Georgian opposition politicians and former
Georgian president Eduard Shevarnadze have
publicly accused Saakashvili of potentially
dragging the country into a war with neighboring
Iran. But David Smith, a senior fellow at the
Georgian Foundation for Strategic and
International Studies in Tbilisi, said such claims
"are reaching really far" and attributed the
worries to political polemicists.
Blank
said that while there had been very few statements
made about the situation publicly, officials in
all three countries were nervous about the rising
tensions.
"They are clearly concerned, as
are the Russians, about the fact that they're
being dragged into a contingency outside their
area that they don't really have anything to say
about," he said.
Russia has responded to
the standoff by announcing military exercises in
the North and South Caucasus that are
unprecedented in scale. While Russia regularly
runs military drills in the North Caucasus, the
"Kavkaz-2012" maneuvers will also involve Russian
units in Armenia and the Georgian breakaway
republic of Abkhazia. It had also reinforced its
military presence throughout the North and South
Caucasus for an indefinite term in response to the
crisis, Blank said.
Over the past year,
Russian officials have often warned that foreign
intervention in either Syria or Iran could lead to
a "wider conflict" in the region. Viewing both
Syria and Iran as countries on the periphery of
its spheres of influence, Blank said Russia was
now attempting to reassert its claim over the
South Caucasus, its traditional buffer zone
against the Middle East.
With the baseline
of regional tensions raised, Mitchell said that
the rhetoric in both Russia and Georgia would
likely turn increasingly more provocative, as both
countries' leaders had a track record of using
external distractions to boost their personal
popularity.
While most of talk remains
just that, he said the confluence of the regional
events could lead to "a potentially explosive
situation".
So far, the South Caucasus has
been exempted from pressure to freeze its
relations with Iran. Azerbaijan was even granted a
special exemption as European officials and energy
lobbyists convinced the US Congress not to include
the development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz natural
gas field in its list of forbidden economic
activities with Tehran, although the Islamic
Republic owns a 10% stake in the venture.
However, Blank said that the South
Caucasus should not count on being able to stay
neutral forever.
"I think they will come
under pressure to move back from their
relationship with Iran if the situation continues
to remain at a high level of tension. On the other
hand, I think a war would be a worse contingency
for them," he said.
Nicholas
Clayton is a Tbilisi-based journalist and
blogger covering the Caucasus and the world. His
blog can be found at
http://www.threekingsblog.com/.
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