Recent incidents highlight delicate links between Azerbaijan and Iran, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLINin Baku
INTERNATIONAL TALKS today on Iran’s nuclear programme are being closely watched by Azerbaijan, which borders Iran, as spy scandals, smuggling arrests and alleged terror plots stoke tensions between the energy-rich Caspian Sea states.
Azerbaijan is long used to balancing delicate relations between the huge and often abrasive states on its borders – Iran, Russia and Turkey – while continuing as yet fruitless negotiations to secure a peace deal with another neighbour, Armenia, following a 1988-94 war.
A spate of sinister incidents in secular Azerbaijan has highlighted the highly sensitive nature of its relations with the Islamic republic of Iran – home to some 20 million ethnic Azeris – and focused Baku’s attention on the talks between Iran and six major powers in Istanbul.
Last month, Azerbaijan arrested 22 of its citizens who had allegedly been recruited by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to attack western targets, including the US and Israeli embassies in Baku. A large cache of guns, ammunition and explosives was seized in that operation.
This came just weeks after Azeri security services arrested two men who were allegedly plotting to kill Israeli targets in Azerbaijan, home to several thousand Jews. These arrests came in the same month as alleged Iranian bomb plots against Israeli diplomats in another neighbour, Georgia, and in Thailand and India.
Just two days ago, Baku’s security services announced the arrest of five Azeris and two Iranians for smuggling weapons into Azerbaijan from Iran.
Tehran has accused Azerbaijan of helping Israeli agents to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists – a claim Baku dismissed as “slander” – and questioned its neighbour’s recent €2 billion arms deal with Israel.
Tehran summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to discuss the deal and to receive a warning that Israel should not be allowed to use his country as a launch-pad for “terrorist acts” against Iran.
Azerbaijan has good relations with Israel, but ministers bluntly rejected a recent report in the US Foreign Policy magazine suggesting Israeli jets could use Azeri airbases as staging posts for a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
This week, Azerbaijan again came under the spotlight when Iran’s intelligence ministry announced it had broken up one of Israel’s “biggest terror and sabotage networks”, leading to the identification of “the Zionists’ regional headquarters in one of the regional countries”.
Analysts said that, given recent events, Iran was probably referring to Azerbaijan.
The comments sharpened Baku’s focus on today’s meeting between Iran and the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, aimed at easing fears over Tehran’s nuclear programme and the possibility of a pre-emptive strike by Israel that could trigger a wider conflict.
“It’s not true that Azerbaijan is providing support to Israeli agents,” Azeri foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov told The Irish Times yesterday.
“Azerbaijan and Iran recognise that good neighbourly relations are extremely important for the stable development of both countries and for the region as a whole,” he said, adding: “But then, you have the other story, that moles are moles, and you cannot stop this in any country.”
Mr Mammadyarov said he hoped for progress in Istanbul over Iran’s nuclear programme, stressing “diplomacy is not exhausted, and we should double and triple our diplomatic efforts to find a common solution to this issue”.
Elnur Aslanov, a senior aide in the administration of Azeri president Ilham Aliyev, said it was “absurd” to suggest Israel could use Azeri bases to bomb Iran.
“But this region is very sensitive,” he acknowledged.
“Of course various parties are interested in keeping the region boiling and preventing peace . . . A number of factors are now on the surface that may not have been felt before. Certain parties are trying to use groups to change the game. Parties want to create their own fifth columns in the region,” he said, without revealing the country or groups he had in mind.
“The statistics of recent months show that there has been increasing activity. But that can be connected to the regional situation . . . And we have all the resources necessary to prevent these activities.”