IS AZERBAIJAN BECOMING AREA OF CONFRONTATION BETWEEN IRAN AND ISRAEL?
By Emil Souleimanov (02/08/2012 issue of the CACI Analyst)
In January, Azerbaijani authorities made a series of announcements
stating they had revealed a plot by three Azerbaijani citizens to
assassinate leading members of Azerbaijan’s Jewish community and a
prominent Israeli official. Of even higher significance were Baku’s
allegations of Hezbollah and Iran being the masterminds of the
prepared assassinations. The circumstances around the event signify
Azerbaijan’s increasingly difficult relationship with Iran and
highlight both the country’s vulnerability to Iranian leverage and its
strategic significance as a conduit for intelligence and potential
military operations against Iran.
BACKGROUND: According to Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Security,
Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov were captured along with automatic
weapons and explosives smuggled from Iran. They were preparing attacks
on the Israeli ambassador in Baku, Michael Lotem, and Rabbis Shneor
Segal and Mati Lewis, both working in Baku’s largest synagogue and an
affiliated Jewish religious school. The third conspirator and likely
leader of the plot is identified as Balagardash Dadashov and has
allegedly been based in the Iranian city of Ardebil across the Araxes
River, hence out of reach of Azerbaijani authorities. The three men
are believed to be members of an Azerbaijani cell of Hezbollah, a
militant Shiite organization and Iran’s `terror proxy’ in the Middle
East. According to the Ministry of National Security, Aliyev,
Huseynov, and Dadashov were supplied with all necessary equipment to
carry out the operation and US$ 150,000 by Iranian intelligence
officers. According to some sources, the conspirators were also
instructed by Iranians to assassinate Gaby Ashkenazi, chief of the
Israeli defense forces, who was expected to visit the Azerbaijani
capital in a few months.
The Azerbaijani government has long sought to profile itself as a
leading partner of Israel in the post-Soviet space in general and the
South Caucasus in particular. Baku incessantly emphasizes the fact
that there have never been cases of anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism in
Azerbaijan and that the country’s Jews have always been a thriving
community that has enjoyed trouble-free relations with the Azerbaijani
majority. Accordingly, local elites have traditionally stressed the
highly secular character of the Azerbaijani regime and society and its
general lack of religious fundamentalism, in contrast to its direct
neighbors to the north and south, in an attempt to display Azerbaijan
as a pro-Western, pro-American and to a certain extent also
pro-Israeli democracy, although with some local peculiarities when it
comes to the practical implications of that democracy. This is
attested by the fact that notwithstanding the recent – and significant
– deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations, Baku has made its best
effort to maintain a cordial relationship with Israel, improving
cooperation with the Jewish state in a wide range of areas. This is
perhaps the reason why the former chief of Israel’s ministry of
defense and current Knesset member Binyamin Ben Eliezer has claimed
that `Azerbaijan-Israel relations are so reliable that they will not
be affected by the tensions with Turkey.’
IMPLICATIONS: Israel has recently intensified its activities in the
South Caucasus, a development that is conditioned by a number of
factors. First, the region is host to a relatively large Jewish
community which counts around 45,000 in Georgia and up to 40,000 in
Azerbaijan, where the number of citizens adhering to the Jewish
religion has tripled over the last fifteen years. Second, the region
has still not entirely realized its potential as an exporter of oil
and natural gas, as well as a transit hub that would link the Caspian
with global markets. Today, around one-sixth of Israel’s oil inflow
comes from Azerbaijan. Last but not least, Israel’s interest in the
region has increased in the context of the fiercely debated
possibility of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the
necessity to safeguard overland access to the Islamic Republic. With
the considerable deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations in recent
years, Armenia’s pro-Iranian stance, Turkmenistan’s neutrality, and
the ongoing turmoil in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Azerbaijan has
attracted Israeli interest. While Baku’s hypothetical consent to any
country that would launch an attack on Iran is under current
circumstances highly unrealistic given Azerbaijan’s vulnerability to
an Iranian counterattack, this probability cannot be ruled out
completely. Most importantly, Azerbaijan’s geographical location and
its interconnection with Iran’s 20 million-strong Azerbaijani minority
might become instrumental for Israeli intelligence and secret
services.
Following the Azerbaijani authorities’ allegations, a number of
observers both within and outside the country have interpreted them as
another effort by the Aliyev government to strengthen its ties with
Israel, securing support from both the Jewish state and the Jewish
Diaspora, and gaining sympathies from the U.S. and key Western nations
for the secular Azerbaijani state that has been at the forefront of
the civilized world’s struggle against religious fanaticism, a popular
ethos that has been widely used by official Baku for at least a
decade.
Even though this viewpoint cannot be completely ruled out, some facts
indicate Tehran’s involvement. Similar attempts have recently been
foiled in Thailand and Bulgaria, with a range of similarities in the
way the plots were organized. In all cases Israeli authorities have
voiced considerable concern over the planned attacks, causing some
observers to speculate that Mossad officers might have been involved
in foiling the planned assassinations in Baku. Indeed, this was not
the first attempt to assassinate Jewish – or Israeli – persons in
Azerbaijan as a similar case was foiled in 2008. After being convicted
to long sentences in Azerbaijan, the conspirators Ali Karaki and Ali
Najmeddin, both Lebanese Shiites affiliated with Hezbollah, and an
Iranian citizen were unexpectedly released and deported to Iran in
August 2010, following sustained pressure from Tehran.
It has recently become obvious that Iranian secret services are
intensifying their efforts to use the Shiite factor to destabilize
Azerbaijan from within. An overwhelming part of Azerbaijanis share the
Shiite faith and religion has become increasingly appealing to a
certain segment of the Azerbaijani population as a protest ideology to
what they consider the degradation of traditional values and
omnipotent corruption. The lack of a strong and widely supported
(secular) opposition party has also played a role in this shift. In
addition to ordinary believers, Tehran has reinforced its efforts to
win the minds of the Azerbaijani Shiite clergy particularly in the
peripheral areas, championing the rights of the `pro-headscarf party’
in the recent clashes following the criminalization of head scarves in
Azerbaijani educational institutions. Accordingly, the language used
by Iran-based Azerbaijani-language TV and broadcast services aired to
Azerbaijan has become more aggressive, contributing to increased
tensions between Azerbaijan’s pro-secular and increasingly vocal and
violent pro-religious camps. Indicative of this was the murder in
November of the `Azerbaijani Salman Rushdie,’ Rafik Taghi, a
well-known physician and publicist known for his influential articles
aimed against Islamic radicalism, as well as the Islamic regime in
Iran. A fatwa sanctioning Taghi’s murder was issued in 2006 by the
Iranian ayatollah Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, which was de facto
approved of by Iranian authorities.
CONCLUSIONS: Whoever masterminded the recent events, they boosted
Baku’s role as a secular Muslim bastion of pro-Western forces in the
turbulent region and further strengthened the crucial
Azerbaijan-Israeli axis. Lacking strong allies and in a situation of
latent conflict with at least two of its immediate neighbors, this is
a rather favorable development for Azerbaijan, which cannot afford a
one-off stand against Iran. For Iran, the world was reminded of an
anti-Jewish – and prospectively also anti-Western – Islamist network
operating in Azerbaijan that is capable of carrying out attacks on
Iran’s enemies. In the current situation marked by the newly imposed
sanctions on oil exports from Iran by the U.S. and key EU states,
reducing Azerbaijan’s potential as a stable energy supplier and
highlighting the existence of militant Islamist groups could help
minimize prospective plans to base a possible attack on Iran on
Azerbaijani soil. Azerbaijan’s importance to Israel also increases, as
it is seen as a friendly country with a deeply contested relationship
with its southern neighbor – a fact that has increased in significance
following the recent deterioration of Jerusalem’s relationship with
Ankara and consequent inability to use Turkish soil for the activities
of Israeli intelligence. Following the intensification of the
Israeli-Iranian rivalry, Azerbaijan’s key geographical location and
the existence of a strong Azerbaijani minority with increasingly
active pro-separatist and anti-Iranian sentiments is regarded with
increasing interest in Israel and might turn the South Caucasian
country into an area of Israeli-Iranian confrontation.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Emil Souleimanov is assistant professor at the
Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University in
Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of `An Endless War: The
Russian-Chechen Conflict in Perspective’ (Peter Lang, 2007).
http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5711