Ilham Aliyev attacked Iran with criticism. The southern neighbor got it for "hatred and threats" against Baku and for the frequent maneuvers at the Azerbaijani and Armenian borders. Moreover, Aliyev promised to protect the secular way of life of millions of Azerbaijanis living in the Islamic Republic. There are far more Azerbaijanis in Iran than in the "titular" republic. Why is Baku taking care of their rights right now?Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made an extremely harsh statement to neighboring Iran on Friday.
Baku has always responded and will respond to any anti-Azerbaijani steps, the Interfax Azerbaijan agency quoted Aliyev as saying.
He recalled that he had worked with three former presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran – Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani. "For so many years, there has never been a situation similar to today. Iran has never conducted military exercises near our borders twice in a few months. Never before have so many statements full of hatred and threats against Azerbaijan been made," Aliyev stressed.
Recall that in mid-October, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran began exercises in the north-west of the country. That is, in the provinces that are traditionally called Iranian Azerbaijan. Earlier, maneuvers codenamed "Ektedar" ("Force") took place in the Aras region of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan, near the borders with Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Iranian army tested Fatah-360 and Fajr-5 satellite-guided missiles during these exercises, the Military Review portal noted.
By "statements full of threats," Aliyev could mean, for example, the words of the commander of the IRGC Navy Ramadan Zirahi. In early October, he called Azerbaijan "one of the places in the region where the enemies of the Islamic Republic get shelter," the Baku portal reported Caliber.az .
Baku was forced to launch retaliatory military exercises on the border with Iran "to demonstrate that we are not afraid of them," Aliyev said on Friday. The Azerbaijani President stressed:
"We will do everything possible to protect our way of life, the secular vector of development of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis, including Azerbaijanis living in Iran. They are part of our nation."
The last statement is particularly curious. According to the constitution, Azerbaijan is a secular state, Iran is a theocratic state, where only a clergyman can be the head of state (rahbar). The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran plays the role of the head of the executive branch – and, by the way, clerics are also often elected to this position. Among them is the current President Ibrahim Raisi.
Iran is a multinational country, and the second largest ethnic group after the Persians (61%) are just Azerbaijanis (16%). They make up the majority in the northwestern provinces of Ardabil, East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan (here the population is mixed, Azerbaijani-Kurdish). Many Azerbaijanis live in the provinces of Zanjan and Qazvin – and this is very close to the capital Tehran. The total number of Azerbaijanis in Iran is up to 15 million people. At the same time, in independent (aka Northern) Azerbaijan, the titular nation is less than 10.2 million.
According to Baku experts, there are much more compatriots on the other side of the border. "There are 30-35 million ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Iran, and we will support them," Mubariz Ahmadoglu, head of the Center for Political Studies, told VZGLYAD newspaper.
Natives of Iranian Azerbaijan and other ethnic Turks have historically played an important role in Persian politics. Turkic clans ruled Iran both in the Middle Ages and in Modern times. The penultimate Shah dynasty, the Qajars, came from a Turkoman tribe related to the Azerbaijanis. The mother of the founder of the last dynasty, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was Azerbaijani. Finally, the current Supreme leader of Iran (Rahbar), Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is also an ethnic Azerbaijani.
At the same time, the residents of South Azerbaijan do not have any semblance of cultural, let alone political, autonomy. "Between 18 and 35 million ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Iran have good positions in the economy and politics, but these positions do not correspond to the aspirations of Tehran," said Vladimir Sazhin, senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "In particular, this concerns talks about the declaration of independence and even the annexation to Azerbaijan of the northern territories of Iran, where ethnic Azerbaijanis live."
It should be noted that South Azerbaijan had the experience of separatist statehood in the XX century. In 1945, with the participation of the USSR, the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (DRA) was established with its capital in Tabriz and under the leadership of one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Iran, Seyid Jafar Pishevari.
The republic, which arose not without the patronage of Joseph Stalin, was supervised by the "Azerbaijani Stalin", the first secretary of the Communist Party of the AZSSR Mir Jafar Bagirov. The biography of Heydar Aliyev in the ZHZL series says that the future president (and then a young employee of the USSR MGB) participated in the Soviet mission in South Azerbaijan.
The People's Government of the DRA relied on the Soviet contingent stationed in Northern Iran in 1941-1946. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the Tehran Shah's troops entered the territory of the DRA, liquidating the South Azerbaijani statehood. Pishevari fled to the Azerbaijani SSR and soon, in 1947, died in a car accident near Baku.
"Divisive ideas are being suppressed by Tehran. In Baku, this is less felt, but the tendency to support their counterparts in Iran is felt",
– noted Sazhin. "On the other hand, after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, one of the main concepts of the doctrine of the new Islamic Republic was the export of the revolution on the Iranian model. The first object of this revolution was then Soviet Azerbaijan, where the majority of believers are Shiite Muslims, as in Iran," the orientalist continues.
"That is, the tension was growing even then. After the collapse of the USSR, Tehran's efforts to Islamize Azerbaijan continued, but without success. In the current Republic of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijanis are for the most part quite far from religious dogmas, problems of Shiism," he added.
Moreover, if at the very beginning of the conflict in Nagorno–Karabakh, Tehran supported Azerbaijan, but after Baku began to focus more on Turkey, Israel and the United States - sworn enemies of Iran, Tehran realized that all attempts at Islamization were futile, so "Shiite Iran began to support Christian Armenia," Sazhin recalled.
Now Tehran is concerned about one of the consequences of the Second Karabakh War – the project of creating a transport "Zangezur corridor" from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan and further to Turkey. The corridor should pass through the Armenian territory along the border with Iran.
Mubariz Ahmadoglu recalled that for almost 30 years Azerbaijan's border with Iran "has been under the occupation of Armenia," which Tehran did not object to. "And when we liberated the Azerbaijani-Iranian borders from the Armenian occupation (referring to the actions of the Azerbaijani army in the fall of 2020 – approx. VIEW), Iran began conducting military exercises near our borders," the Baku political scientist said.
Moreover, the Iranians have installed a pontoon bridge on the Araks River flowing in the central part of the Armenian Highlands, which does not suit Baku. "The Araks River is the border between Azerbaijan and Iran. Half of the river belongs to Iran, and half belongs to us. But by installing a pontoon bridge, they violated the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan... Therefore, today the president explained with his statements that we will not tolerate military exercises near our borders and statements from Tehran," the Azerbaijani expert said.
He suggested that the situation is not escalating to a critical level solely thanks to Russia, which probably "restrains" Tehran through diplomatic channels. Otherwise, Iran "would have used even more equipment during military exercises." "Iran opposes not only Azerbaijan, but also Turkey, which is an ally of Baku. Iran is stopped only by Russia's actions," Ahmadoglu believes.
Orientalist Said Gafurov believes that Aliyev's bellicose statements are connected not so much with the history of Iranian-Azerbaijani relations and the national issue, as with intrigues around the implementation of a specific economic project. The expert recalled the professional diplomatic qualities of Aliyev, "who just doesn't say anything." "His statements are related to internal issues, not external ones, in which Aliyev is usually much more careful," Gafurov said. According to the expert,
There is a more important issue at stake – the North–South international transport corridor, thanks to which "Azerbaijan is becoming an important transit power."
"When it came to the specific implementation of the project, that is, about huge cash flows, the main question is who these contracts will go to. Aliyev may try to put pressure on the right organizations to get the contracts. Now the division of this corridor has begun, which is important for everyone, because this is a huge breakthrough – it is the shortest way from South Asia to Europe. Now we can bargain, because everything is frozen due to the conflict in Ukraine," the orientalist suggested.
Gafurov agrees with Ahmadoglu only that there is a "political context" in the military exercises conducted by Iran near Azerbaijan. The expert added that it will not come to a military conflict between Iran and Azerbaijan, "because both countries are strongly connected economically," but "Aliyev can afford harsh statements to influence political processes inside Tehran."
"Despite the fact that the situation is very complicated, I don't think Baku is seriously going to annex South Azerbaijan. But Baku's good relations with Washington, Israel and Turkey are terribly infuriating to everyone in Tehran. No fighting will begin, but the cold war will continue," Sazhin summarizes and gives a forecast.
Andrey Rezchikov, Mikhail Moshkin
