Iran is the only state in the world that has borders with all three sides of the Karabakh conflict - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.
That's really, as they say, out of luck.
Because in this conflict, flaring up right at the borders, he will have to maneuver between two fires.
The length of the land border of Iran and Azerbaijan is 765 km.
A lot of.
But length is not the main thing here.
First, the territory of modern Azerbaijan is a former part of the Iranian system of statehood.
Azerbaijan went to Russia later, under two peace treaties: the Gulistan in 1813 and the Turkmanchay in 1828.
It would not be a great exaggeration to say that there are more ethnic Azerbaijanis on the territory of Iran than in Azerbaijan itself.
These are the provinces of West and East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Qazvin, Merkezi, Gilan, Hamadan and others.
According to various sources, from 15 to 30% of Iran's population are ethnic Azerbaijanis (or Turks), Azeri, which in quantitative terms ranges from 15 million to 30 million people.
It is the largest ethnic group in Iran.
And perhaps one of the most influential.
There are a lot of them in the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in military posts and in the leadership of the country.
Until now, many are convinced that Ayatollah Khamenei himself is an ethnic Azeri, but Iran has not officially confirmed this, because the spiritual leader of Iran can only be Iranian - period.
The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a lit match thrown not only to the Iranian borders, but also to its Azerbaijani provinces, in which nationalist sentiments are smoldering in one way or another.
For example, in the first days of the aggravation of the Karabakh conflict, the media reported about the arrest of Azerbaijani nationalists in Tabriz (with reference to the Turkic channel Gunaz).
A number of Azerbaijani activists staged an "event" on the topic of Karabakh and were arrested by the IRGC.
Iranian sources themselves report such incidents without mentioning the nationalities of those arrested and the reasons for the outbreak of unrest.
So, for example, yesterday @iribnews_guilan, and then the conservative Tasnim, published a video footage from CCTV cameras in an emergency hospital in the city of Rasht (Gilan province, located on the Caspian Sea, where many ethnic Azerbaijanis live) - a crowd of young aggressive people burst into the waiting room with knives, hitting random people.
Either as a sign of solidarity, or anger that Iran can support Armenia in this conflict.
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Ojag Nijat Agha, a representative of the spiritual leader of Khamenei, hujat al-Islam, added fuel to the fire with his fiery speech, who, against the background of the Iranian and Azerbaijani flags, congratulated the Azerbaijani people on the successes achieved in the counter-offensive operation and called the Armenian armed formations occupation.
Against the background of Iran's official position, this looked somewhat strange, because everyone knows how exceptionally warm Tehran's relations with Armenia are.
(Whereas Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan is supported by Turkey, Iran's main regional rival, and London - which is only the huge British Petroleum building in the center of Baku. But, perhaps, it was a pill of tranquility for those very 30 million ethnic Azeris inside Iran.)
The common border of Iran and Armenia is only 35 km.
But what kilometers they are!
Ever since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Khomeini has attached exceptional importance to building deep intercultural, political, economic relations and security systems.
Squeezed on both sides by the Turkic-speaking Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia built its exclusive relations with Tehran, which opened its cultural centers, diplomatic missions and cautious centers of influence there.
Today Armenia is a key partner of the Eurasian Economic Union, and it was in Yerevan, on the sidelines of the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council (SEEC), that President Putin met with President Rouhani and Prime Minister Pashinyan in October 2019, for example.
Over the past 20 years, Iran and Armenia have discussed strategic joint projects - the construction of a railway, an oil refinery on the border with Iran, a third high-voltage power line, transit of Iranian gas, the creation of an electric power corridor and much more.
Today, the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline with a total length of 140 km is in operation, connecting Iranian Tabriz and the station in Armenian Meghri.
What will be the actions (and not the words) of Tehran, which side will he take in this military conflict?
Brigadier General Qassem Rezayee, deputy commander of Iran's Law Enforcement Forces, warned both Armenia and Azerbaijan not to shoot at our borders.
Two mortar shells hit the areas adjacent to our borders by mistake, and we have notified them and we hope that peace will be restored. "
The general was extremely gloomy, and the conservative influential news agency Fars called the editorial on the Karabakh conflict "Watch out for bullets", which is very reminiscent of the Russian common people "watch the bazaar", otherwise, to quote Rezai, "others may abuse the situation."
Who are these "others" and how can they take advantage of this renewed military conflict?
Is it only a regional conflict?
Or are we dealing with a "geopolitical matryoshka"?
“Azerbaijan, eliminating Karabakh, is making a corridor for itself to Turkey.
So a bridge is formed between Turkey and Azerbaijan, and for Turkey it is immediately a bridge to the Caspian Sea, a bridge to Turkic-speaking Uzbekistan.
Great Britain and the United States have bet on Turkey: will it be able to create Great Turan in the near future with the prospect of entering Western China?
That is, a direct bridge is now being broken through for the supply of money, weapons - whatever - from Turkey to Western China, bypassing Russia.
Because China cannot be set on fire from any direction, and one of the Mi6 towers is trying to implement this theme.
If Armenia is now surrendered (because today it is indirectly under the Americans), then Turkey is making a direct corridor to Azerbaijan and beyond.
Moreover, the regions of Armenia and Azerbaijan are one of the branches of the Silk Road, and the destabilization of this region automatically means the destabilization of one of the transport corridors of Chinese goods to Europe, and also blocks the very idea of the Caucasus as a transport channel from China to Europe, including through Turkey.
Who can prevent this?
Iran only.
Russia will not interfere for many reasons, "says Nikolai Vavilov, a China expert and author of the South China Telegram channel and the book" Chinese Power ".
Iran follows a tradition of sophisticated Persian diplomacy.
So, on Wednesday, September 28, the official speaker of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Said Khatibzadeh, suddenly began to publicly refute the accusations that "Iranian land was used as a transit route for the transfer of weapons and military equipment to Armenia."
The announcement came after foreign media reported that trucks carrying weapons were seen along the Armenian-Iranian border.
However, Khatibzade said that there were no weapons in them, but that they were always transported (grapes, probably).
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif spoke by phone with Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and called on the parties to dialogue.
Iranian diplomacy has taken this position: "clashes between the two former Soviet republics over Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that lies within Azerbaijan but is ruled by ethnic Armenians."
Despite the actual war on its borders, Iran, judging by the newspaper covers, remains calm and offers intermediary conditions for negotiations, which suggests that what is happening for it is not catastrophic and is under control.
Here, Iran, like Russia, converges not only the ways of resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict: no one is going to send troops or take any side, offering only peace negotiations.
But also some fatigue by Prime Minister Pashinyan, who behaved arrogantly, boldly and conflicted.
In a word, it is not accepted in the East.
"Armenia will no longer put up with the status of a third-rate country and will position itself as a state whose opinion must be reckoned with," and Armenian Foreign Minister Mnatsakanyan sharply responded to the initiatives proposed by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the Karabakh negotiation process that "there is no point in digging further."
Now, they say, it's time to act decisively.
Sadly it sounds, but after the Azerbaijani army occupied the strategic Murovdag ridge for 24 hours and decapitated the intelligence of the General Staff of Armenia, Pashinyan's ambitions diminished sharply, and he, like another leader of a neighboring Slavic country, immediately called for help.
In fact, Pashinyan built the vector of his policy in such a way that not neighbors in the region, but Washington, became a factor determining Yerevan's foreign policy, which predictably aggravated the prime minister's relations with Moscow, Tehran, and Baku.
Today both Moscow and Tehran are ready to help him.
Iran criticized the OSCE Minsk Group (Russia, the United States and France), unable to resolve the conflict, and called for the creation of a new mediation group consisting of Russia, Iran and Turkey.
(More precisely, Tehran proposed the "3 + 3" formula: "Big Three" plus three Caucasian neighbors - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia.)
And this new group of negotiators is already working: President Putin spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Aliyev.
Both Moscow and Tehran have good relations with Baku, so we will wait for news.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.