Azerbaijan

Amid increasing tension between Tehran and Baku, Azerbaijan's defense minister Safar Abiyev visited Iran on Monday and promised that his country would not be used as a platform from which to attack Iran. Press TV reports:

The relations between the two neighbors have been strained after Azerbaijan signed a USD 1.5 billion deal with Israel to purchase drones and anti-aircraft and missile systems.

Last month, Tehran summoned Azeri Ambassador Javanshir Akhundov to protest Baku’s agreement.

However, Azeri officials said that the weapons were being purchased to liberate 20 percent of the country’s occupied territories.

If there other, more important subjects that the two sides discussed, they weren't reported. So was the main purpose of the visit for Azerbaijan to reassure Iran about the Israeli weapons? It seems like Iran must have known better. Indeed, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahedi downplayed the significance of the Israeli weapons, according to News.az:

Azerbaijan-Israel arms deal is not new and this deal was signed some time ago. It has no connection with Iran-Azerbaijan relations. Iran is ready to assist Azerbaijan in the defense field and to organize joint trainings.

But it also would seem a strange time to start discussing joint military trainings and so on, as Iran and Azerbaijan don't have particularly close military relations. There have been other recent high-level discussions between the two countries: Last week, their foreign ministers (plus Turkey's) met in the Azerbaijan exclave of Nakhchivan.

With the Russian government agreeing to finally pay Kyrgyzstan rent for the military facilities that Russia operates there, pressure is increasing on the Kremlin to pay up for the other military bases it operates in the former Soviet Union.

Just days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to pay his Kyrgyzstan counterpart Almazbek Atambayev $15 million in back rent for the Kant air base and other facilities, Tajikistan is signaling that it, too, intends to pay hardball. The two countries agreed in principle back in September to extend the lease of the base for Russia's 201st division for another 49 years. But the issue of payment was left until later, and on Tuesday Dushanbe's ambassador to Moscow suggested they would drive a hard bargain, in an interview with RFE/RL:

"[N]o one in the world today intends to give up even a small plot of their land for nothing." The Tajik ambassador said, "our country should keep this in mind, whether there should be payment of some $300 million or compensation through providing military-technical aid," adding "nobody will say thank you to those who give up their land for free to others."

The $300 million figure has been mentioned in Tajikistan but Dostiev conceded that even 10 percent of that amount of money would be acceptable.

Amidst all the publicity this weekend to mark the 20th anniversary of the February 25, 1992 slaughter of ethnic Azeris in the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Khojaly , one interesting bit of fresh information related to those events may easily have been overlooked.

On February 24, the Washington, DC-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released the full transcript (in Russian) of a 2000 interview conducted by current senior associate Thomas de Waal with then Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sargsyan.

In 1992, Sargsyan was the commander of breakaway Nagorno Karabakh's military forces, and, if anyone got the lowdown on what Armenian fighters did or did not do at Khojaly, he is, arguably, the man.

Some of his comments already have appeared in de Waal's 2003 book on the Karabakh conflict, "Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War." But what was left out provides insightful reading -- not only about the details of the war, but also about the psychology of one of its main protagonists.

Asked about the slaughter at Khojaly, Sargsyan does not mince his words: " [W]hen a shell is flying through the air, it doesn't distinguish between a civilian resident and a soldier; it doesn't have eyes. If the civilian population stays there, even though there was a perfect opportunity to leave, that means that they also are taking part in military operations . . . "

Sargsyan concedes that "some form of ethnic cleansing" took place in Karabakh, adding that "It's not possible otherwise."

"But we didn't think up this method. They thought this up," he said in reference to the Azerbaijanis. "when, with the help of their militia, they kicked our people out of the Hadrut and Shusha regions" of Karabakh.

Azerbaijan has agreed to buy $1.6 billion in weapons from Israel, a massive deal that is likely Azerbaijan's largest single arms purchase ever. The deal will include drones, anti-aircraft and missile defense systems, Israeli officials have told news agencies. The deal would be almost equal to Azerbaijan's stated 2012 defense budget of $1.7 billion (though will certainly be spread out over many years).

The timing of the deal is misleading: regardless of the ongoing ratcheting up of tension between Israel and Iran, and increasing attention to Israel's intelligence activities in Azerbaijan, these weapons are destined to be used not against Iran, but against Armenia, which controls the breakaway Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Though it's tempting to think otherwise. The AP reports:

Israeli defense officials Sunday confirmed $1.6 billion in deals to sell drones as well as anti-aircraft and missile-defense systems to Azerbaijan, bringing sophisticated Israeli technology to the doorstep of archenemy Iran.

The sales by state-run Israel Aerospace Industries come at a delicate time. Israel has been laboring hard to form diplomatic alliances in a region that seems to be growing increasingly hostile to the Jewish state.

Its most pressing concern is Iran's nuclear program, and Israeli leaders have hinted broadly they would be prepared to attack Iranian nuclear facilities if they see no other way to keep Iran from building bombs...

As Iran's nuclear showdown with the West deepens, the Islamic Republic sees the Azeri frontier as a weak point, even though both countries are mostly Shiite Muslim.