The leader of the National Awakening Movement in southern Azerbaijan, Mahmoud Ali Shahrghani, is experiencing unprecedented glory days: the man whose movement advocates the secession of the northern part of Iran with an Azeri majority, and who has been banned from entering the Republic of Azerbaijan since 2006, recently had the opportunity to appear on Azerbaijani television channels from exile in Washington, D.C., and boldly call for the overthrow of the Iranian government, which has faced major protests across the country, without regard to Baku's agreement with Tehran not to raise separatist allegations On Iran, and preventing dealing with Shahragani, who promoted in one of his previous television interviews that "Greater Azerbaijan will be the death of the chauvinist and hateful mullahs' regime."
In fact, Shahragani's media appearance in Azerbaijan is a strong indication of the rising tension between Iran and Azerbaijan, resulting from each other's accusation of undermining its sovereignty and alliance with its enemies. As the three largest Azerbaijani population centers in northwestern Iran, Tabriz, Urmia and Ardabil, joined anti-government protests in Iran at the end of last year, Tehran is now viewing with great concern the stirring up separatist strife that the Iranian regime accuses Baku of supporting. Tehran's concerns toward Azerbaijan, however, are not only related to separatist concerns, but also to Middle East struggles for influence in the Caucasus in which Tehran is engaged against Turkey on the one hand, and against Israel on the other.
Iran in the South Caucasus
(Al Jazeera)
Since their independence, the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought an armed conflict over the Armenian-inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh region within Azerbaijan's borders. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Armenia took the territory and came under its sovereignty, and Azerbaijan was unable to regain it until the 2020 war. From the very first moments of this conflict, Iran's neighbor maintained its official neutrality towards the situation in the South Caucasus, albeit relatively leaning toward Armenia in contrast to Turkey's bias towards Azerbaijan.
This Iranian bias towards Armenia is paradoxically, especially since Azerbaijan is a Shia-majority country, just like Iran. However, this majority was the reason for Baku's reticence in relations with Tehran, as it had long feared exporting the model of the Shiite Islamic Revolution to its borders. Tehran, on the other hand, had concerns about mobilizing Azerbaijani society against the regime of the Islamic Revolution, where Azerbaijani nationalism combined with anger over the socio-economic crisis could create an explosive situation in Iran's northern provinces.
The recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia has exacerbated Tehran's fears, which were deeply concerned about the changing balance of power around it, as Iran shares a 750-kilometer border with Azerbaijan and the Nakhshiwan region (an Azerbaijani enclave separate from the rest of Azerbaijan and adjacent to Turkey and Armenia). Azerbaijan launched attacks on targets in southern Armenia in 2022 with the aim of controlling the Zangzor corridor, which is located on the border between Iran and Armenia, linking the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchiwan region. Tehran saw the move as part of an attempt to encircle it, especially since the corridor crossing Armenia's southern border provides Turkey with direct access to Central Asia, thereby reducing Tehran's influence.
Tehran has long continued to develop its longstanding geopolitical alliance with Armenia as a key tool in its efforts to counterbalance Turkish and Israeli influence in the region. Although its border with Armenia is short, it is of utmost strategic importance, as it is a lifeline for three million Armenians whose landlocked country was isolated by Azerbaijan and Turkey, thus giving Tehran an important card at the negotiating table in the Caucasus region. Not only did it support Armenia during the 2020 war and allow Russia to use Iran's airspace to send military supplies to Yerevan, but it also included increasing Iranian business, energy and communications projects with its Armenian ally. On November 2022, <>, the two countries signed an agreement to extend the terms of the "gas-for-electricity" deal, which provides for the import of Iranian gas and the export of electricity to Armenia. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also stepped up its military cooperation with Armenia.
Iran has accused Azerbaijan of being behind the October 26 attack on a Shia shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz. (Reuters)
But Tehran realized after the end of that war that it needed some influence in Azerbaijan, and indeed sought to be present in Baku politically and militarily despite tensions. Tehran has focused on expanding economic cooperation and advancing plans for comprehensive regional transport lines, such as the north-south railway corridor linking India to Russia via Iran and Azerbaijan. In March 2022, Azerbaijan and Iran signed an agreement to build new railways, highways and energy supplies linking the southern territory of Karabakh captured by Azerbaijan with Nakhchiwan province. The agreement stipulates that the length of the new highway will be 55 kilometers and will start from Zankilan, an alternative route to the Zangzor Pass.
However, underlying geopolitical tensions remained an influential factor that hindered Iran's attempts at rapprochement with Azerbaijan as a result of mutual accusations between the two countries. These tensions culminated with Azerbaijan accusing Iran of recruiting some 19 men to carry out unspecified acts that would "violate the interests of state security." Concurrently, Iran, in turn, has recently shifted toward open support for Armenia after its traditional approach to diplomatic balance in the Caucasus, instructing Azeri-language state media to implicitly threaten Azerbaijan through their programs, and accusing Azerbaijan of being behind an October 26 attack on a Shia shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz that killed 15 people.
Israel on Iran's Doorstep
(Reuters)
A year into the 2020 war, Azerbaijan was surprised by armored units, artillery, drones and combat helicopters on its northwestern border, which was only one of Iran's largest military exercises in decades. The story began when Baku imposed a tax on Iranian trucks carrying goods to Armenia, and then Iran made a local parade of its military forces that it quickly repeated in October 2022, this time including the Aras River border bridge, in a sign that Tehran will not tolerate any change in border conditions that Baku seeks. According to the American Institute for the Study of War, Iran also wanted to say that it would not accept the presence of "Israeli intelligence" on its border, especially with reports of Israeli intelligence activity in the Caucasus using Azerbaijan as a base. It was no coincidence, then, that Iran decided to call the exercises "Conquerors of Khyber."
Since Azerbaijan and Armenia gained independence in 1990, Israel has reached out to the two countries to open relations. Azerbaijan has responded and developed a strategic relationship that long preceded the occupying Power's relations with most Arab and Muslim countries. In return, Armenia did not take the initiative to develop its relations with Israel, choosing to establish a close relationship with Russia, which established two military bases on its territory and established a strong relationship with Iran. Over time, oil-rich Azerbaijan supplied Israel with a large share of its oil needs and became a buyer of Israeli military technology. Israel, in turn, has become the second-largest arms supplier to Azerbaijan after Russia over the past decade, supplying it in the 2020 war with advanced drones and other weapons.
Azerbaijan now supplies Israel with a large share of its oil needs and has become a buyer of Israeli military technology. Israel has become the largest arms supplier to Azerbaijan. (Anatolia)
Iran has long spoken of Azerbaijan as a base for Israeli spying on it through tools such as surveillance drones or through the Azerbaijani state security apparatus, which Iran considers closely linked to Israeli intelligence. The Iranians have explicitly pointed out that in 2018 Israel stole large numbers of sensitive nuclear files. After the 2020 war, Tehran returned to talk about the Israeli presence in the Caucasus, Brigadier General Kyomars Heidari said: "Iran obtained information that the forces of the illegal Israeli regime were present in one of the warring countries (Azerbaijan), and had plans to change the regional geopolitical situation," and Iran even accused Israel of using its presence in Azerbaijan to assassinate Iran's nuclear scientists.
With Israel insisting on approaching Tehran's borders in response to the latter's strengthening of its presence in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, the Ukrainian war appears to have opened a new door in the conflict between the two countries. After large-scale losses forced Russia to redeploy some of its forces from Syria and the South Caucasus on the Ukrainian front and even resort to Iranian weapons, Russia is no longer interested in restricting Iran's presence in Syria as it did previously during its understandings with Israel. Given Israel's alignment with Ukraine and the Western alliance, the strengthening of the Russian-Iranian alliance means that Azerbaijan's role as a key ally of the Jewish state is becoming increasingly important.
The struggle for Turkish-Iranian influence
Iran's concerns in the Caucasus are not limited to Israel alone. On October 21, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian opened a new consulate in the Armenian city of Kaban, near the Zangzor corridor. In an urgent message that coincided with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to the Azerbaijani region of Zankilan, Iran stressed that its alliance with Armenia is firm and heading towards further development, and that it is serious in all its military, diplomatic and political steps to maintain the regional status quo in the region and refuse to change the regional balance of power.
The 2020 war saw Turkey's role in the Caucasus emerge more than before, as Ankara's open military and political support for Azerbaijan against Armenia, which has historically been strained with Turkey for nearly 100 years, has emerged. With Ankara's insistence on supplying Azerbaijan with modern weapons after the war and training its soldiers, Tehran's concerns have been exacerbated, which views Turkey as a NATO member and an ally of the West, and at other times wary of promoting Turkish nationalism by leveraging the common language, history and culture to communicate with the Azeri population of northern Iran.
This comes at a time when Tehran sees itself isolated due to the restriction of international sanctions on its role as a regional trade center, while Turkey moves to make itself a trade center by stimulating the "Middle East-West Corridor Initiative through the Caspian Sea", which Ankara also refers to as the "Middle Corridor", to link Turkey to the Caucasus via Georgia and Azerbaijan, and then through a maritime link that crosses the Caspian Sea with Central Asia and China, a project that was popular after the Ukrainian war among some decision-makers in China and Europe because it goes beyond Russia and Iran together.
Moreover, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranians worried that Western sanctions against Russia would impede the Kremlin's ability to act as a guarantor of the stability of the Armenian state and the balance of power in the Caucasus, as Moscow itself plays a pivotal role in the region through institutions such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) under which some two thousand Russian peacekeepers are stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, Iranians believe that the potential decline of Russian influence in the South Caucasus due to the shift of Russian focus toward Ukraine could cause the United States to replace Russians in the Caucasus or lead to an increased Turkish and possibly Israeli presence.
At a time when Iranian leaders criticize Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's focus on "unifying the geography of the Turkish world" through the Zangzor corridor (expanding Turkey's influence), Iranians have evidence that Israel is also playing its game. The Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan had earlier tweeted while reading a book titled "The Magical Legends of Tabriz," and given that Tabriz is the capital of Iran's Azerbaijan province, many Iranians viewed the gesture as an endorsement of the Azerbaijan province's separatist agenda.
The coming days will reveal whether Iran will continue the deliberate escalation against Azerbaijan to ensure that it retreats from the Zangzor corridor project, which it sees as an extension of Turkish influence around it, or whether it will seek to reach a calm or compromise, perhaps mediated by Russia, which is also concerned with not dragging the parties in the Caucasus into a comprehensive escalation. A wider military confrontation than the 2020 war is not ruled out if Baku and its allies insist on the corridor without taking Iran's concerns into account, especially with occasional complicated negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. As for confronting Israel and its growing presence in the Caucasus, it remains unclear to what extent Tehran can formulate a defense and security policy to confront it in light of its great preoccupation with the internal situation and its position in Syria.