Tehran takes issue with
Azerbaijan By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO, California - Israel is
reportedly using Azerbaijan as a "watchover"
playground against Iran, but in light of Iran's
summoning of Baku's envoy to Tehran and Israeli
accusations that Iran is behind a car bomb found
near the Israeli Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, on
Monday, it is fair to say that we are witnessing
an extension of the Iran-Israel conflict into the
Caspian-South Caucasus.
This is not to
mention a car bomb that did go off in New Delhi,
damaging an Israeli Embassy car, coinciding with
the Tblisi incident and thus raising the specter
of a widening net of violence and counter-violence
stemming from the increasingly dangerous tension
between Iran and Israel.
In Baku, which
has offered itself to the US's and Israel's covert
campaign of anti-Iran counter-proliferation, the
news of the twin incidents in Tblisi and New Delhi
will likely serve as a warning
sign that it could be
witness to similar, if not worse, troubles
threatening the country's peace and tranquility if
it continues to favor Iran's adversaries.
Israel has been quick to blame Iran for
both incidents.
In summoning Iran's
ambassador to the Foreign Ministry for questioning
over Israeli reports that the killers of
scientists in Iran had fled to Israel via
Azerbaijan, Tehran's intention is to level new
pressures on Baku to reconsider its bandwagoning
with Tel Aviv, which is threatening military
action against Iran over its nuclear program. In
no uncertain terms, Iran's military leaders have
made it clear that if attacked, they will
retaliate against any country aiding the invaders.
The Iranian protest note to Azerbaijan on
Sunday asked the Azeri government to "stop the
activities of the Mossad intelligence services in
that country against Iran", Iran's IRNA news
agency said.
An Azeri Foreign Ministry
spokesman, Elman Abdullayev, said the Iranian
protest was an "absurd reaction" to Azerbaijan's
protest last month over an alleged plot by Iranian
agents to kill Israelis in Azerbaijan, the BBC
reported.
The ball is now in Baku's court,
it can either continue with its decision to turn
itself into a front-line state against Iran and
prepare for the worst consequences if its
territory or air space are used for strikes
against Iran, or take drastic measures to insulate
itself by adopting a more balanced approach. The
latter would lessen tensions with its bigger and
more powerful neighbor to the south - that has
just celebrated the 33rd anniversary of the
Islamic Revolution.
In this time, despite
three decades of Western animosity, Iran has
remained unchanged and, in fact, turned more
aggressive and virulent in light of the
comprehensive sanctions and military threats
against it.
As the only Shi'ite-dominated
nation in the Caucasus-Central Asia, Azerbaijan
ought to have normal relations with Iran,
irrespective of its grudges that Iran has
excellent relations with Armenia, which has
controlled a chunk of Azeri territory in
Nagorno-Karabakh since the mid-1990s.
But,
far too often, Azeri leaders have forgotten that
Iran's tilt in favor of Armenia at the time was
due to Baku's "pan-Turkic" missteps that
introduced irredentist worries for Tehran.
Unfortunately, though Baku's leaders have
moved away from the self-inflicted injuries of
early post-independence (1990s), they have not yet
moved to the level of foreign policy
sophistication that ensures optimal national
security based on good neighborly relations. In
mortgaging its national security to the US and
Israel, ie, two out-of-area powers that have no
intrinsic commitments to Azerbaijan's well-being,
the government in Azerbaijan has entered into a
Faustian bargain that may well backfire.
Azerbaijan's attitude is viewed with
strong suspicion by Tehran's ruling elite, which
may resort to offensive measures inside Azerbaijan
to retaliate against Israeli aggression.
In such a scenario, Azerbaijan would be
put on a state of alert, scaring energy investors,
and thus introducing economic hardship to an
already weak and fragile economy that counts on
regional peace to advance its "pipeline" politics.
This could also have adverse effects for
European energy security, now slightly edging
toward insecurity due to the European decision to
embargo Iranian oil, thus making Europe ever-more
dependent on Russia, a main supplier of European
energy, a true nightmare scenario for all European
politicians.
Strategically, then, in
addition to threatening to close the Strait of
Hormuz, Iran's other retaliatory measure consist
of sowing the seeds of instability in the South
Caucasus-South Caspian region, two major routes of
energy pipelines to Europe.
Tehran could
achieve this relatively easily by engaging in
counter-covert operation activities that are
tantamount to tit-for-tats against Israeli and
Western interests in the broader region, given the
widening net of tensions between the two sides.
This signals that countries such as Azerbaijan are
caught in the fallout of a new cold war. (See Azerbaijan
at crosswinds of a new cold war Asia Times
Online, September 9, 2008.)
For now,
however, with Iran's Asian energy partners giving
the cold shoulder to US-European efforts to impose
a total energy ban on Iran, Tehran does not feel
sufficiently threatened to resort to such drastic
counter-measures that would translate into growing
tensions with some of its neighbors.
A
delicate balancing act between the quest for
economic survival against the tidal waves of
sanctions and the use of hard power to strike back
constitutes Tehran's overall strategy; this is in
a constant state of being fine-tuned, given the
fluid and dynamic state of the crisis in which it
finds itself.
However, if it is perceived
that Baku is insensitive to Iran's requests to
rein in US and Israeli operators in its territory,
then Tehran will take it to the next level and
most likely take action inside Azerbaijan.
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