Turkish diplomats have sometimes referred to themselves as the region's "firemen," hustling around the region putting out brushfires before they become full-on conflagrations. A lot of this has been done through various mediation efforts (not all successful) that Ankara has been initiating in various places.
The newest Turkish mediation effort appears to be between neighbors Azerbaijan and Iran, who don't see eye-to-eye on a host of issues. The Hurriyet Daily News has more on an upcoming meeting of the three countries' foreign ministers Turkey is convening in northern Iran.
While Turkey's relations with Iran have been rapidly improving in recent years, it might be worth nothing that Turkish-Azeri relations have been less than smooth since Ankara initiated its now frozen rapprochement with Armenia in 2009.
The U.S. can maintain its global primacy if it (among other things) plays Russia off China, India, Iran and Turkey off Russia and Turkey off Iran. That's the analysis of globe-spinner extraordinaire Robert Kaplan, along with his brother Stephen (apparently recently retired as a top CIA official).
The essay, America Primed, is in the new edition of The National Interest and doesn't deal too explicitly with the Caucasus or Central Asia. But it's all about how the U.S. (assisted by the "Anglosphere," other English-speaking countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia) can maintain dominance on the Eurasian continent. And that requires American leadership to make sure that no other country -- in particular China, Russia or Iran -- gets too powerful. What does that entail, specifically?
For one, playing India off Russia (and "punishing" Pakistan):
Out of national pride, and because of its own tense relationships with China and Pakistan, India needs to remain officially nonaligned. But that will not stop New Delhi from accepting more help from the United States, especially as India now wants to wean itself off Russian arms and replace them with better quality American equipment. Washington should require no quid pro quo from India to make it even more powerful in the region; this is about more than public pronouncements and diplomatic atmospherics, this is about quietly delivering arms, transferring technology and supplying intelligence data to one nation to punish another for taking billions of American dollars without providing the crucial help we require in return.
Also, encouraging Turkey, even with an apparently growing Islamist orientation, to counterbalance Iran:
Late in 2007 Uzbekistan customs officials intercepted a rail car carrying some radioactive material, most likely either cesium or uranium, en route from Kyrgyzstan to Iran. That bit of tantalizing information comes courtesy of WikiLeaks, which has released several U.S. State Department cables about the incident. Unfortunately, the cables don't shed light on the most important questions: who was sending it, who was receiving it, and what were they going to do with it
The seizure was made on November 28, 2007, according to the initial report:
1.(S/NF) Post wishes to alert the Department and Washington agencies per reftel that it has received a report indicating a potential incident of illicit trafficking in nuclear and/or radiological materials. This report came to post's attention via xxxxxxxxxxxx (please protect) reporting informally, unofficially to Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) rep....
¶2. (S/NF) Details of the incident follow:
A) (S/NF) Current location of material: The rail car in question has been quarantined in the vicinity of xxxxxxxxxxxx on the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border by the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
B) (S/NF) Transport status of material: (e.g. stationary or in transit, who is responsible for it, how secure is it, what does the host government plan to do with it) The Ministry of Emergency Situations has quarantined the rail car and the Institute of Nuclear Physics was making preparations as of December 3 to open the rail car for further investigation....
E) (S/NF) Intended destination of material: (port or border crossing and country) Iran was the point of destination....
News from Iran about its new military technology should always be taken with a large grain of salt, but nevertheless, this is interesting:
A senior Iranian Navy commander announced on Sunday that the country plans to launch a new home-made destroyer in the Caspian Sea which will enjoy more advanced naval equipment compared with Iran's first home-made destroyer Jamaran....
"The destroyer will be used in one of the combat units of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Navy in the Caspian Sea and will start its naval mission and operation in the lake in the near future," the commander announced.
(via Fars News Agency)
One confusing detail: the story goes on to say that the Jamaran will be deployed in the Persian Gulf and the new (and apparently unnamed) destroyer in the Caspian. But a few months ago Iran announced it was deploying a new destroyer in the Caspian; the logical conclusion was that that destroyer was a Jamaran-class vessel. But this new story doesn't mention that previous launch in the Caspian. Nor does it mention an announcement from August about new missile boats being sent to the Caspian, as well.
But whatever the case, at least rhetorically Iran is trying to assert its sovereignty in the Caspian. And coming just a week after the conclusion of the Caspian littoral summit, where regional leaders including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad vowed to cooperate on security matters in the sea, this seems to be sending the opposite message.
Christopher Schwartz, blogging at neweurasia.net, believes the cables to show that Turkmenistan (bordered by both Iran and Afghanistan) has a "surprising role" for the U.S., although it is well known that the U.S. Embassy has built border installations at the Turkmen-Iran border and trained Turkmen border guards to better spot contraband in this geographically strategic and sensitive Central Asian nation (not to mention paid Turkmenistan for transit rights on the Northern Distribution Network).
To be sure, there are some analysts who have come to believe that the failure of two successive U.S. administrations to appoint an ambassador to this strategically-vital country for more than four years seems...strange. So strange, that one theory is that there are some forces that just don't want to have a congressional confirmation hearing potentially spotlight sensitive things that go on there. We were told in July, however, by senior officials that this ambassador is now "in the pipeline". (Along with the gas pipelines like Nabucco, presumably.)
Armenia got a dressing-down from the U.S. for selling arms to Iran, Azerbaijan has reservations about embarking on a U.S.-sponsored military "train and equip" program and also would oppose the U.S. fomenting unrest in Iran's ethnic Azeri regions. Those are some of the early revelations, from world of Eurasian security issues, in the first tranche of the latest Wikileaks data dump.
One State Department cable from December 2008 describes how in 2003 Armenia "facilitated Iran's purchase of rockets and machine guns," and those weapons were later found to have been used in an attack in Iraq by Shiite militants that killed one U.S. soldier and wounded six others. According to the cable (via The Guardian):
The direct role of high-level Armenian officials and the link of the weapons to an attack on U.S. forces make this case unique and highly troubling. These transfers may provide a basis for sanctions pursuant to U.S. legal authorities. We propose a series of steps that Armenia will need to take to prevent future transfers, which will be weighed in the consideration of sanctions. We hope to use the threat of sanctions as a tool to generate Armenian responsiveness so that we will not be forced to impose sanctions measures.
The cable also relays a letter from then-Deputy Defense Secretary John Negroponte to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, threatening sanctions if Armenia doesn't clean up its act:
Notwithstanding the close relationship between our countries, neither the Administration nor the U.S. Congress can overlook this case. By law, the transfer of these weapons requires us to consider whether there is a basis for the imposition of U.S. sanctions. If sanctions are imposed, penalties could include the cutoff of U.S. assistance and certain export restrictions.
The presidents of Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan gather to talk the Caspian
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is on his way to the NATO summit in Lisbon, amid expectations that the meeting will mark a new era in NATO-Russia relations. But yesterday, at another summit -- in Baku, of the five nations surrounding the Caspian Sea -- he gave a Putinesque, thinly veiled warning about the West sticking its nose in that part of the world:
“If at any moment we relax in our mutual cooperation, there is no doubt that other states will want to interfere with our concerns — states that lack a know-how of or a relationship with the Caspian but whose interest stems from economic interests and political goals” he said.
It's not too hard to figure out what "other states" he might be talking about.
At the summit, the five countries signed a security cooperation agreement, the content of which does not seem to have been reported at all. But an Azerbaijani analyst says Russia's big concern is western military involvement in the Caspian:
Russia stands against any foreign naval forces in the Caspian Sea and is most concerned about NATO naval forces.
(And it probably goes without saying that Iran is even more against such a thing.)
But the overarching issue in the Caspian is how to delineate the waters -- and the oil and gas resources within -- between the five countries. And unsurprisingly, no apparent movement was made on that. The Moscow Times surveyed some analysts on the issue:
Iran's defense minister Ahmad Vahidi has completed a visit to Azerbaijan, and apparently mooted the idea of joint naval exercises between the two countries (and possibly other coastal states Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia). Azeri Press Agency reports:
Iran may hold military exercises together with Azerbaijan and other littoral states, Defense Minister of Iran, General Ahmad Vahidi said at the press conference on the outcomes of his visit to Azerbaijan, APA reports.
Iranian Minister said such exercises aim at maintaining peace and stability in the region.
There was no immediate response from any of the other countries about whether they would be amenable to that.
Vahidi did acknowledge that Iran has been building up its military capacity in the Caspian...:
To APA’s question whether Iran’s strengthening its military forces in the Caspian Sea with the new ships will influence the balance of forces in the region, Minister said it will not violate the stability in the Caspian region.
“Iran considers the Caspian Sea the sea of peace, security and friendship. We have got good relations with the littoral states and these steps have been agreed with all,” he said.
... and still said that the sea should be demilitairzed:
"The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the Caspian Sea as the sea of peace and friendship and believes that the sea should remain unmilitary."
At the same time, the deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian littoral states met in Baku and worked on a draft security strategy for the sea, in advance of a November summit (also to be held in Baku).
Russia's announcement last week that it was calling off the sale of S-300 air defense systems to Iran was a big deal -- but the real story may have been even bigger than that, says Dmitry Gorenburg. Moscow has in fact canceled nearly all arms sales to Iran, which represents more than ten times as much business as the S-300. And he concurs with the consensus that it was Russia's desire to get along better with the U.S. that did it:
As far as the specifics of the S-300 decision, I don’t think the Russian leaders were ever all that strongly committed to selling the S-300 to Iran. I think that to some extent, it was always partially a bargaining chip that was used against the U.S. in moments when relations were problematic. So from that point of view, it’s possible that Putin didn’t change his mind at all, but the circumstances changed sufficiently that the balance between Russia’s bilateral relationships with the U.S. and Iran changed sufficiently that it became worthwhile to publicly shift positions on this sale. This would mean that U.S. policies toward Russia were bearing fruit.
Foreign Policy has a good piece on Iran's increasingly active diplomacy in the South Caucasus, and argues that one of Tehran's chief goals is to prevent the U.S. from establishing a military base on Iran's northern border (given that the U.S. already has bases to Iran's east, west and south):
Iran's primary motivation, Blank said, is to keep other countries, particularly the United States, from getting too chummy on its northern border. For Iran, which borders Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan -- all wobbly nations with a significant U.S. military presence -- a U.S. military base in the South Caucasus would be a disaster. Iran is calculating that the way to prevent that from happening is through strengthened alliances -- or at least mitigated ill-will -- with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. "The message they keep repeating is: We are friends, we are economic partners, but if you allow a U.S. base on your soil, very bad things will happen to you," says a Georgian executive who spoke anonymously in order not to compromise his relationship with Iranian officials. "They are friendly, but the message is clear."
I'm not sure about this: the reasons the U.S. couldn't/wouldn't attack Iran have little to do with physical distance from Iran. It seems possible that Tehran may simply see that a stable, prosperous and friendly region directly to its north would be helpful, regardless of what the U.S. may or may not be doing.
Still, Iran is, of course, taking some shots at the U.S.:
