by amwaj
In a sign of mounting tensions between Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan, Baku’s Ambassador Ali Alizadeh was recently summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran. A strong objection was conveyed to him over the “unfriendly statements of Azerbaijan’s top officials,” along with the expectation that such remarks must “cease immediately.” In a reciprocal move, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry summoned Iran’s Ambassador Abbas Mousavi.
Unprecedented rhetoric
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The statements that have irked Iran were uttered by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in a Nov. 8 speech marking the victory over Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Without naming Iran, Aliyev issued a thinly veiled warning that countries that conduct military exercises “in support of Armenia near our borders should know that we are the main power in the region, and if necessary, we can show that again.”
The previous month, in October, the Islamic Republic conducted military drills in an apparent warning to Azerbaijan not to annex a key strip of Armenian territory that borders Iran. Aliyev has repeatedly referred to that territory as “ancestral Azerbaijani land.” To highlight its resolute opposition to any border changes in the South Caucasus, Iran on Oct. 22 opened a consulate in Kapan, the center of Armenia’s Syunik Province in Azerbaijan’s crosshairs.
Tehran is concerned—and given Baku’s territorial claims, with good reason—that the land corridor that Azerbaijan and Turkey seek to establish through Armenia would cut off Iran’s access to Armenia. Such a move would also connect Turkey with mainland Azerbaijan and, through it, with the Turkic states of Central Asia. Tehran is worried that such a connection would completely bypass it, and lead to a loss of leverage and influence in the region.
Amid the territorial dispute, Aliyev sought to drag the broader Turkic world into his stand-off with Iran at the Nov. 11 summit of the Organization of Turkic States. There, he ventured that the “geographical borders of the Turkic world are wider than the Turkic states”—apparently oblivious to the irony of making such a statement in Samarqand, a major historical center of Tajik Persian culture in the heart of Uzbekistan.
The most controversial aspect of Aliyev’s recent rhetoric, however, has been his unprecedented assertion of a claimed responsibility to protect the rights of the “40 million Azerbaijanis living outside Azerbaijan who are deprived of the opportunities to study in their language,” referring to Iran’s sizeable ethnic Azeri minority.
Crossing ‘red lines’
While tensions between Baku and Tehran are nothing new, the current escalation of rhetoric has featured the crossing of several tacit red lines that the two sides were previously careful not to violate.
One such red line, for Iran, is the apparent embrace by Baku of irredentist claims to the northwestern Turkic-majority regions of Iran which Azeri nationalists refer to as “South Azerbaijan.” Until recently, Aliyev’s administration had been cautious not to seemingly endorse such claims so as not to upset Tehran. Such caution now seems to be cast aside. Indeed, there appears to be an orchestrated campaign in Azerbaijani media to openly advocate for the secession of “South Azerbaijan” from Iran. Given the authoritarian nature of the Azerbaijani authorities, the campaign is likely taking place with the blessing of the president’s office.
Portraying the tectonic shift underway, Mahmudali Chehreganli—a self-proclaimed ultra-nationalist leader of “South Azerbaijan”—was until only a few years ago a persona non-grata in Baku. In contrast, on November 4 he appeared on Azerbaijani state television to promise the impending end of the “Persian fascist mullah regime.”
Of further note, Azerbaijani media has also featured anti-Iran rhetoric by politicians from Israel, a close ally of Baku and arch-enemy of Tehran. For instance, a minister from former—and probably future—Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party on Nov. 19 proclaimed in a semi-official Azerbaijani outlet that “the time for talk has passed, and now Israel and Azerbaijan need to act together against Iran.”
Crackdown on Shiites amid counter-irredentism
Against the backdrop of the rhetorical escalation, the authorities in Baku on Nov. 2 arrested 19 people accused of spying for Iran and preparing terrorist acts in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani State Security Service (SSS) identified the detainees as alleged members of Müsəlman Birliyi Hərəkatı (Muslim Unity Movement). MBH is a major and politically active Shiite organization in the country, with many of its members—including its leader, prominent preacher Taleh Baqirzadeh—already imprisoned.
Members of MHB have categorically rejected any association with violence and blasted the recent arrests as further evidence of the state’s alleged drive to stamp out Shiism from society. Of note, Azerbaijan has an apparent track record of framing religious Shiites as Iranian agents, with little due process. This dynamic tends to escalate during periods of heightened tension with the Islamic Republic.
Iran has in turn hinted at Azerbaijan’s potential involvement in the Oct. 26 terrorist attack on a major Shiite shrine in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz, which has been claimed by the Islamic State group (IS). Iran’s intelligence ministry has charged that the alleged mastermind was an Azerbaijani national who flew to Tehran from Baku.
Meanwhile, fueled by Azerbaijani irredentist claims on Azeri-majority regions in Iran, a countervailing discourse has emerged in Iran. This entails discussion of a revision of the 19th-century Turkmenchay and Golestan treaties, under which Iran ceded its territories in the South Caucasus to Tzarist Russia. Of note, Azerbaijan was for centuries an essential part of Iran. The treaties of Turkmenchay and Golestan are such a wound in the national psyche of Iran that they are regularly invoked in contemporary politics to denounce any agreement deemed disadvantageous for national interests.
Apart from being featured in Iranian media, the revisionist discourse has notably also been echoed by a number of ethnic Azeri members of the Iranian parliament. While unlikely to result in practical measures, such discourse shows that Iran can also engage in irredentism which depicts Azerbaijan as a “fake Republic of Baku” bound to ultimately “return to the Iranian homeland.”
Looking ahead
At least so far, the Iranian government has maintained a distance from revisionist discourse. Even amid the recent escalation in tensions, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani and Tehran’s ambassador to Baku have hailed Azerbaijan’s victory in the Nagorno-Karabakh war as a “liberation of Islamic lands.” This is while Iran has in past decades tended to side with Christian Armenia as opposed to fellow majority-Shiite Azerbaijan. However, some in Iran see the apparent effort to appeal to Azerbaijanis’ religious sentiments as foolhardy.
The pro-reform daily Faraz, for example, on Nov. 10 lambasted Mousavi as being “out of touch” for congratulating Azerbaijan the day after Iran alleged the involvement of an Azerbaijani national in the IS attack in Shiraz. The more influential Reformist daily Sharq on Nov. 12 went considerably further by demanding that the Ebrahim Raisi administration “revoke the diplomatic recognition of the Republic of Azerbaijan and block transportation from Iranian territory to its Nakhchevan exclave until further notice.” Such radical demands are unlikely to be adopted by the Raisi government, yet it is noteworthy that they are allowed to be voiced freely in state-censored Iranian media. In other words, at the very least, the need to rethink and review ties with Azerbaijan is now widely accepted across the political spectrum in Iran.
The bigger picture is that the future of the Azerbaijan-Iran relationship appears bleak. With each escalatory move, off-ramps become more fraught. Aliyev and his allies in Turkey and Israel may believe that now is the right time to increase pressure on Iran, which is perceived as weakened by domestic unrest and facing international censure for supplying Russia with drones that have been used in the Ukraine war. Encouraged by the statements of support from the US, these actors may also believe that Washington will be on their side too.
But these dynamics may well prove to be a miscalculation. One key lesson that Iran has drawn from having faced years of US “maximum pressure” is that the road to de-escalation goes through counter-escalation.
In the Islamic Republic’s view, Saudi Arabia only agreed to dialogue after the 2019 attacks on Saudi oil facilities claimed by Iran’s allies in Yemen. Similarly, Iran’s recent targeting of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan has been geared to convey the message that domestic unrest has not dented its defense capabilities. In some dimensions, Iran’s exports of drones to Russia have also sought to boost regional deterrence by demonstrating the country’s military capabilities.
With bilateral relations steadily deteriorating, more actors in Iran will likely come to see Azerbaijan in the same light they already do Saudi Arabia and Iraqi Kurdistan—namely, a security threat in cahoots with arch-rival Israel. Ultimately, the Iranian hostility that Baku alleges could thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy—to the detriment of both neighbors.
This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the S&D Group or the European Parliament.
