Azerbaijan Buying Coast Guard Vessels From Israel
by Joshua Kucera
Sept. 1, 2014

Azerbaijan is acquiring 12 new coast guard vessels from Israel and is
discussing the possibility of buying naval corvettes, as well.

The news emerged after Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev formally
opened [8] a new shipyard for the coast guard. No mention was made
publicly of the Israeli provenance of the ships, but online weapons
enthusiasts [9] and the experts at Jane’s [10]examined the photos that
were released on the president’s official site and came to the
conclusion that these were warships — six Shaldag Mk V patrol boats
and six Saar 62 offshore patrol vessels — that Israel had announced
it was building for an anonymous customer.

In addition, posters exhibited at the event suggested that Azerbaijan
was looking at a more heavily armed Israeli ship, the Saar 72 corvette
[11].

Azerbaijan has already made other naval purchases from Israel, notably
some Gabriel-5 anti-ship missiles [12], which became a source of
tension [13] between Azerbaijan and Iran: Tehran, fixated on Israel,
mistrusts Baku’s close military ties with its enemy.

That tension was reignited recently, when Iran claimed to have shot
down an Israeli drone on its territory, and then blamed [14] a “former
Soviet state to the North” for launching the drone. The reference was
unmistakably to Azerbaijan, but curiously Iran’s ambassador to
Azerbaijan then said that claims the drone was launched from
Azerbaijan were not made by Iranian officials but were Israeli media
disinformation [15]. Thus far, there seems to be no word from Tehran
on the news of Israeli boats on the Caspian.

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From: A. Papazian