The Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance continues to make the headlines although details of relations between the two states are shrouded in mystery. This is not an alliance against Armenia, which to this day holds on to territories captured during the war with Azerbaijan. Israel and Azerbaijan cooperation against Arab radicals and Iran serves no purpose other than internal security.
However, there is recent evidence of a somewhat chilled atmosphere in Armenian-Israeli relations resulting from frequent accusations in Yerevan of a Zionist involvement in serious crimes committed in 1915. Israelis consider this to be blood libel. There is a certain dislike in Baku towards Arab radicals, who trained Armenian rebels at Lebanese PLO camps. At the same time Azerbaijan has close relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab countries that encourage “Muslim brothers.” Azerbaijan’s attitude to Iran is one of anxiety and vigilance. There are twenty million Azerbaijanis in Iran who are deprived of basic rights. But even all these circumstances fail to offer a satisfactory explanation for the unexpected phenomenon of an Israel-Azerbaijan alliance.
But there’s also ample evidence that the alliance is real, including a recent transaction involving the sale of 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of Israeli weapons to Azerbaijan, including the delivery of a significant number of Israeli drones. A mutual flow of intelligence continues uninterrupted, which may explain the Azerbaijani authorities’ success in fighting against terrorism. But at the same time Baku has yet to open an office in Israel, it wants to avoid offending its Muslim and Arab partners.
The exotic alliance was again in the news in recent days after the news agency “Reuters” revealed there was speculation that Israel had a military base in Azerbaijan to be used in the event of a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It may surprise some to see journalism display such a short memory, the same rumours of an Israeli airbase were published back in March by the American magazine, “Foreign policy”; the article attributed anonymous but “high-ranking” sources. Six months on and there’s still no confirmation of the story but that did not stop “Reuters” excited revelation of the “sensational” news. Israeli military analyst, Ron Ben-Yishai, wrote back then that the U.S. administration was engaged in a campaign of deliberate ‘misinformation’ designed to discredit Israel’s various military options.
His colleague, Alex Fishman wrote in more detail: “To get to Azerbaijan our Air Force needs to cross the skies of Turkey and Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Along the way are Georgia and Armenia. One single publication, such as this (Foreign Policy), could inflame not only Tehran and Baku but also other countries, which would realize that they were being drawn into someone else’s “showdown”. But even if we can remove the restriction on crossing other countries’ airspace, questions still remain: will this shorten the distance to the target, does it justify the probable complications with other states? There is no single answer to these questions. When it comes to attacking targets in Tehran, Azerbaijan, of course, has a geographical advantage. When it comes to facilities in southern Iran, the distance does not justify this adventure, ” said Fishman.
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Political analyst, David Adelman, said that Israel could find no suitable bases on Azerbaijani soil: “With our modern means of surveillance, we would have got evidence of the use of a base in Azerbaijan. But it does not exist. The idea of use by Israel of an abandoned military airbase just looks absurd. After all, a modern air base is not only the asphalt, but also a complex integrated system of electronics, control, monitoring, surveillance and protection. Such a base in Azerbaijan does not exist today. ”
Adelman became an adviser to Prime Minister Olmert, just in time for the operation to destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor, six years ago. He is certain that Israel is able to put an end to the Iranian nuclear program, but there are other scenarios: “Iran’s currency has been devalued through the year by eighty percent. There has been rioting in Tehran. It is possible that Israel’s surgical strike will not be necessary”.