Landlocked Armenia’s world is claustrophobic enough as it is, with borders closed to the left and right with neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan. Now, according to ex-Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, a fresh series of international sanctions against Iran threatens to shut Armenia’s third, southern border as well, and choke off a key trade route -- a development that “Armenia cannot afford,” he told Al Jazeera.
With some $300 million in bilateral trade turnover a year, Iran is Armenia's fourth largest trade partner. Tehran, eager for clout in the region, has been keen to take that partnership still further, but these plans could be jeopardized by Western efforts to starve the Iranian government into abandoning its nuclear ambitions, Oskanian reasoned.
“Clearly those [new] sanctions are going to bite Armenia” and “will be tantamount for Armenia to a third closed border,” Oskanian said. He noted that Yerevan will have no other choice but to respect its obligations to the West and enforce the sanctions. The European Union is the main outlet for Armenian goods and Armenia, its economy still trying to stagger out from under the effects of the international financial crisis, is a recipient of Western aid.
If the border with Iran effectively shuts down, that would leave Armenia with only a northern, land-based trade gate. This route lies across Georgia -- not exactly a bosom buddy, historically -- to Armenia’s biggest trade partner and ally, Russia. But Georgian-Russian tensions cast a pall on the reliability of this route.
Amid the growing threat of a Western shakedown for its alleged nuclear secrets, Iran is continuing with its regional charm campaign in the South Caucasus. During Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s November 8 visit to Yerevan, Tehran again pushed for visa-free travel with Armenia and for boosting bilateral trade.
Visa-free relations have become a major regional policy theme for Iran, which already dropped visa requirements for Armenia’s neighbors, Azerbaijan and Georgia. But only Georgia -- curiously, the most fervently Western-centric of the three -- has reciprocated the move.
For landlocked Armenia, friendship works vertically, and animosity horizontally. It is sandwiched between enemies to the west and east (Turkey and Azerbaijan), while its only close regional friends sit to the north and south (Russia and Iran).
Azerbaijan is hearing a diplomatic growl from across its southern border, which was recently violated by a lone Iranian border guard. The breach cost 20-year-old Akber Hasanpour his life and resulted in an exchange that once more laid bare the repressed antagonism between Baku and Tehran.
The Iranian authorities have fired a protest note to Baku and demanded an explanation from the Azerbaijani ambassador in Tehran. Iranian officials said that Azerbaijani border police violated international norms and agreements between the two countries by pursuing and shooting to death the unarmed Hasanpour.
After inadvertently crossing into Azerbaijani territory on October 19, the young man refused to surrender to Azerbaijani border guards, Azerbaijani news services reported. In a claim that Tehran finds hard to digest, the Azerbaijani side says that he then attacked a large detail of Azerbaijani border guards and was fired on in response. The Iranian died of his wounds in hospital. His body was handed over to Iran yesterday.
Iran's movement of an oil rig toward Azerbaijan's territorial waters in the Caspian Sea in 2009 caused Baku to fret about its lack of military capacity to handle such a threat, and to seek advice from U.S. officials on what to do, recently released Wikileaks cables show.
The cables make for some fascinating reading, and seem to provide some real insight into the strategic thinking of both the Azerbaijani and U.S. governments about the threat of conflict in the Caspian. They make it clear that Azerbaijan is afraid of both Iran and Russian threats against its gas and oil infrastructure in the Caspian, and that U.S. embassy officials are eager to prevent any such conflict because of the economic disruption that it would cause.
The crisis, which seems not to have been previously reported, began in November 2009, when Iran moved its new Alborz-Iran rig into waters that were disputed between Azerbaijan and Iran. The U.S. shared some (unspecified) intelligence information to Ali Asadov, senior energy advisor to President Heydar Aliyev to which Asadov responded:
"This situation is challenging, your information shows this. This tension will escalate." Asadov did not outline specific responses the Azerbaijani government planned to undertake. Rather, like many of our GOAJ interlocutors, Asadov appears to be gathering information and weighing Azerbaijani options, in light of superior Iranian naval strength."
Asadov's assessment of the situation is worth quoting at length:
That's the provocative conclusion reached by the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, which seems to have gotten a hold of a document discussing the scenario of the Tsentr-2011 military exercises between Russia and several Central Asian countries that wrapped up today. The newspaper printed a map, purportedly related to the exercise, which envisages a joint Russian-Kazakhstan force in the Caspian Sea repelling an attack from the south -- from the southeast, "up to 70 F-4s and F-5s" and from the southwest, "up to 30 F-4s, F-5s and Su-25s." Well, a quick look around the militaries of the southern part of the Caspian Sea that have those sorts of aircraft brings one to only one conclusion: it's Iran. (You can see scans of the documents, in Russian, here.)
In the scenario of the exercise, the political leadership of Iran's decides to carry out air strikes against the oil fields of the Mangistau region of Kazakhstan which are being developed by American corporations (especially Exxon-Mobil).
The paper does note, however, that the scenario "may not match the real concerns and intentions of Russian strategy." Which is probably an understatement.
It's true, however, that the unstated concern behind much of the recent Caspian naval buildups by Russia and the other post-Soviet littoral states is Iran. In a report on Kazakhstan television (via BBC Monitoring), the head of Kazakhstan's Navy noted the fact that the borders of the Caspian Sea have yet to be delimited:
A couple of weeks ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmahinejad visited Dushanbe, and Tajikistan's defense minister Sherali Khairulloyev made a statement that raised some eyebrows around the region:
"Today, if necessary, the Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces can reach Tajikistan in two hours, and if a military presence of the Tajik side in the similar plans and programs of the Islamic Republic is necessary, the representative units of Tajikistan's Armed Forces are also ready to travel to Iran," Khairulloyev said...
"We support each other under any conditions and both friends and foes consider us as two friendly and brotherly countries," he added.
Say what? The prospect of Iranian forces intervening in Tajikistan is certainly an intriguing one. (The prospect of Tajikistan's forces doing the same in Iran is clearly just a rhetorical bone thrown to Tajikistan's dignity; it has enough trouble defending its own territory, let alone that of Iran.)
The website Asia-Plus asked a couple of Tajik analysts for their thoughts on what to make of Khairulloyev's statement, headlined "Tajikistan-Iran: Against Whom Are We Allied?" (in Russian, translation by BBC Monitoring):
Abdugani Mahmadazimov, chairman of the Association of Political Scientists of Tajikistan: "Tajikistan has no enemies, neither among the neighbours nor among other countries. However, there are problems in some issues in the region, in particular the use of border rivers for irrigation and for energy purposes. These issues should be solved through talks, not involving the military forces of foreign states. Of course, Iran has a strong air force that it can immediately deploy....
Turkey's collapsing relations with Israel over the past week or so have occasioned a new round of hand-wringing about whether the West is losing Turkey. But that drama has overshadowed another, countervailing, development: Turkey's agreement to host a NATO air defense radar. This has recently been one of the most sensitive Turkey-NATO issues; NATO wanted Turkey to host the system, but Turkey didn't want it to explicitly target Iran, even though it is obvious to everyone that that's the threat the system is intended to protect against.
But for whatever reason, the Turkish government has changed its mind, agreeing to host the radar and even (in a somewhat between-the-lines fashion) acknowledging that it has to do with Iran:
“We are of the opinion that the step taken [in deploying the radar system] is important for our region. That’s why we, as the government, have decided [to station the system in Turkey] after broad consultations,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said late Tuesday.
That has bolstered Turkey's relationship with NATO, argues Lale Kemal in Today's Zaman:
Turkey's decision to host on its soil the radar component of a US-sponsored missile shield project should be seen as a political decision reaffirming Ankara's ties with NATO. This decision comes at a time when the alliance has begun to perceive Turkish foreign policy goals as a deviating from those of the Western club. One Western official commented on the Turkish decision to host the missile defense radar saying, “Turkey is back in the club.”
A top Iranian military official has taken aim at neighboring Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, saying the government in Baku may become a victim of a "people's awakening." That has prompted angry replies from Baku and a disavowal from Iran's foreign ministry. The controversy began with remarks made by Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, quoted by the Fars News Agency:
"I hope Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would pay heed to the issues which strengthen pillars of his government, otherwise he will face a dark future since people's awakening cannot be suppressed," Firouzabadi said.
"People's awakening cannot be suppressed. Some neighboring and Muslim states with which we enjoy friendly relations continue to ignore friendship criteria and give freedom to Zionist regime (of Israel) to meddle in their country's affairs. They also give command to bar Islamic rules," Firouzabadi added.
Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have always been wary, as Iran mistrusts Baku's secular leadership and suspects them of having claims over the roughly 25 percent of Iranians who are ethnically Azeri. Tensions have increased recently with the shooting death of an Azerbaijani border guard, apparently by an Iranian counterpart. And, as the Fars piece reported:
Azerbaijani officials have been preventing Muslim schoolgirls wearing headscarves from attending schools.
Hundreds of people staged demonstrations in Azerbaijan and called on the government to overturn the decree. They also chanted slogans against the anti-Islamic law.
The peaceful demonstrations were stopped by police and security forces that resorted to force and detained a number of people.
Iran and Turkey’s competing requests for visa-free access to Azerbaijan increasingly smack of a scene from a romance novel, where a beauty in period dress faces a choice between two debonaire wooers.
Enchanted by Azerbaijan's various strategic charms, both suitors have cancelled short-term visas for Azerbaijani visitors, but Azerbaijan is taking its time to reciprocate, trying to mete out its graces sparingly and equitably to the two fellow Muslim countries.
Baku, though, is increasingly pressured by both sides to make a decision between its attraction for longtime ally and cultural soul mate Turkey and its complicated relationship with Iran.
Azerbaijan even had to offer explanations today after the Turkish daily Today’s Zaman, citing senior Azerbaijani presidential aide Ali Hasanov, reported that pressure from Iran is preventing Baku from proceeding with a visa-cancellation deal with Ankara.
The story claimed that Iran threatened to block Azerbaijan’s access to its exclave of Nakhchivan should Baku cancel its visa requirement for Turkey.
Hasanov, though, protested that “I only meant to say that canceling the visa regime with Turkey can only happen in sync with canceling the visa regime with Iran,” 1news.az reported.
“At this stage, the simultaneous cancellation of visa regimes with either country brings us to issues related to national security, immigration and other issues that we are not ready to deal with right now,” he elaborated.
Sound familiar? Quite plainly, Baku is just not ready to commit.
Is the demilitarization of the Caspian Sea still a viable possibility? Representatives of the five Caspian littoral states (Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran) just finished meeting in Baku, and their statements to the press afterwards suggested that all was peace and harmony on the sea. Via Contact.az:
The question of military activity is an important element of the legal status of the Caspian Sea, said [Azerbaijan's] Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov. "The work in this direction is going on. There are different approaches. There is an idea of demilitarization. There is an idea of regulating the activity of armed forces. Of course, we have not come yet to a common opinion," Khalafov said on April 27.
The Russian representative at the talks, Alexander Golovin, agreed:
[Golovin] stressed that "all the littoral states agree that the Caspian should be a sea of peace and friendship." "And accordingly, none of the littoral states is going to start up the arms race, or compete in the military sphere with each other," Golovin said. This is not the field of activity on which the littoral states must spend their efforts, he said.
So they say. But actions speak louder than words, and here are a few of the recent developments on the sea:
