Hidden war in the South
Caucasus By Nicholas Clayton
TBILISI, Georgia - Two apparent
assassination attempts against Israeli diplomats
in the South Caucasus over the past month have
spread fears in Georgia and Azerbaijan that the
region may once again become a battleground for
great power politics.
Last Monday, a
"magnetic bomb" was found attached to the car of a
driver for the Israeli Embassy in Georgia. The
same day, a bomb exploded on an Israeli Embassy
vehicle in New Delhi, India, wounding the wife of
an Israeli defense official, among others.
Less than three weeks earlier, neighboring
Azerbaijan announced it had arrested three
would-be assassins who were allegedly hired and
paid to kill the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan
and attack a Jewish school.
Also last
week, the Iranian Foreign Ministry handed the
Azerbaijani ambassador a
note of protest, alleging Azerbaijan aided Israeli
intelligence in assassinating an Iranian nuclear
scientist in early January, who was also killed by
a bomb magnetically attached to his car. Iran
claims Azerbaijan knowingly allowed the assassins
to escape through its territory.
The two
sides have been feverishly trading barbs
throughout the week, but Georgia has been notably
silent. Although Georgia, led by pro-Western
President Mikheil Saakashvili, maintains close
ties with the United States, it has also worked to
open up is relations with Iran, signing a
visa-free travel agreement and several other
bilateral arrangements with the Islamic Republic
over the past two years.
Lincoln Mitchell,
a professor at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs, said that the
incident underlined the untenable nature of that
position.
"If you let Iranians come in
without visas, this kind of thing is going to
happen. Iran has made its views on Israel quite
clear, and the notion that some Iranians might
come in and do bad things to friends of America
and friends of Georgia is not crazy," Mitchell
said.
Mitchell, who has authored a book on
the Saakashvili regime, said that while there have
so far been no overt attempts by Georgia's
American backers to persuade it to step back from
Iran, that is about to change.
"For
Georgia, which is a client of the US, whose base
in the US is in the far right, this is the one
fight they can't pick because they'll never win,"
he said.
But Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a
professor at the Center for Iranian Studies at the
University of London, said that although the South
Caucasus countries looked West for investment and
security guarantees, Iran for them was
"inescapable, embedded in the region like few
other countries", and they would not rush to break
ties.
"The pressures have been there for a
long time, but Iran continues to have cordial
relations with these states because it is in their
mutual interest," he said. "The United States is
far away when you sit in Kazakhstan, Dushanbe and
Baku. Regional leaders seem to be aware that it is
not in their interest to collude too one-sidedly
with one side or the other. It is a balancing
act."
But while the other two countries in
the South Caucasus - Azerbaijan and Armenia - have
worked to moderate their relationship between
regional players, Georgia is a different story.
Saakashvili is currently heading into a
surprisingly competitive parliamentary election in
October, with a presidential election following in
2013. The president has been coy about whether he
will step away from politics or return to power as
prime minister - a post strengthened by recent
constitutional changes.
American officials
have repeatedly said they hope to see a peaceful
transfer of power through free and fair elections
in Georgia - a feat the country has yet to
accomplish since its 1991 independence from the
Soviet Union. Therefore, Mitchell said Saakashvili
could take advantage of his usefulness in this
area to give himself the leeway to maintain his
preeminent position in the country's politics.
"If the Georgian government is smart, then
[the current tensions with Iran are] an
opportunity to double down on their support for
the United States, and if they play it any other
way then they are making a huge mistake. Going
into a tough two years for himself politically,
Saakashvili can cement his indispensability, which
is wrong. He's not indispensable. But it would be
very easy for him to say, if there is a war going
on, that 'I have to stay on and be prime
minister'," Mitchell said.
For now,
Georgian officials have the time to make up their
mind as an investigation into the bombings goes
on. On the day of the attacks, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately pointed
the finger at Iran. Georgian officials have mostly
been mum on the incident, with some downplaying
the attack, noting that the bomb was attached to
the local driver's personal car, not an embassy
vehicle. But, the president's administration
released an ominous statement the day the bomb was
found, calling it "a serious challenge" to the
state.
Many Caucasus observers worry that
the assassination plots in Georgia and Azerbaijan
portend a return to the region serving as an
espionage no-man's-land like Switzerland before
World War II.
"Everyone is using the South
Caucasus for this hidden war. No doubt about it,"
Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian
Foundation for Strategic and International
Studies, told the BBC this week.
While
there is not yet any concrete evidence tying Iran
to the car bombings, many analysts say there is no
other country with the same combination of motive,
capability, and history of similar behavior as
Iran.
Furthermore, the attacks came one
day after the anniversary of the assassination of
a top Hezbollah commander, ostensibly by Israeli
operatives. On Saturday, Hezbollah reiterated its
alliance with Iran, and its leader Hassan
Nasrallah said this month that Iran had provided
it "moral, political and financial support in all
its available forms since 1982".
While
Adib-Moghaddam said that it would be illogical for
Iran to risk its favorable relationships with
countries like Georgia and India for attacks that
do negligible damage to the enemy, Wayne Merry, a
Eurasia expert at the American Foreign Policy
Council, told Radio Free Europe last week that the
proximity of Azerbaijan and Georgia and the
relative ease at which Iranian operatives can
access their territories make Israeli facilities
there the "most available targets".
"I
think what we are looking at here is a low-level
asymmetric conflict between intelligence services
- Iranian and Israeli - in which the territory and
sovereignty of other countries are not
well-respected," he said.
While Georgian
officials remain tight-lipped about the incidents,
Armenia and Azerbaijan spent the last month
conferring with their allies.
Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev visited North Atlantic
Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels on
February 15 and has also met with Israeli
President Shimon Peres and US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton over the past few weeks. Armenia
sent its deputy foreign minister to Iran last
week, "reinforcing" its relationship with Tehran
"for the sake of maintaining peace and stability",
according to Armenian state media.
Georgia
is now left to decide if it can still keep its
friends close, and its friends' enemies closer.
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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