After some subtle diplomacy and a night of wine-drinking in Georgia, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hopped over to Azerbaijan, the final stop in her Caucasus diplomacy binge. There, she switched from wine and dine to hydrocarbons and Karabakh.
Perhaps to be seasoned with a touch of Iran? Not exactly the closest of chums, Baku and Tehran this year have been engaged in an energetic sparring match on everything from Iran's alleged plans for terrorist attacks to Azerbaijan's alleged plans for a gay pride parade.
The news from Azerbaijan's less-than-chatty pro-government media outlets about the Clinton talks is terse, however, and does not mention Iran. It essentially boils down to one word: "success."
Just as Clinton left Georgia, though, Iran's Tbilisi embassy issued a statement seeking to clarify matters for Georgians about Tehran’s confrontation with the West over its nuclear interests.
The embassy instructed locals not to be misled by supposed media misrepresentation of Iran's nuclear program, which, Tehran insists, is an entirely harmless extracurricular activity.
But the reason for such a statement may not be just a chance for Iran to keep its verbal weapons in fighting order. Ahead of Clinton’s visit, Georgian police had issued a statement that an unnamed “foreign country” had been traced to the alleged attempted bombing of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi this February.
Georgian officials have not elaborated. Georgia, the region's main American booster -- Saakashvili even presented Clinton with a "symbolic" and "personalized" Georgian passport, the news magazine Tabula reported -- is in an awkward position because of its geographic proximity to Iran and interest in Iranian investment. On the eve of Clinton’s visit, the foreign ministry claimed, though, that no request has been made for Georgia to push back from such contacts.
EurasiaNet.org this spring repeatedly requested an interview with Iranian Ambassador Majid Saber to provide Tehran’s take on Tbilisi’s ties with Washington, but the embassy, in turn, repeatedly postponed the interview.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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