Multi-vector Azerbaijan - between Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States
The intention of the United States and the European Union to continue shaping the military, economic, and political infrastructure of its presence along the southern periphery of the former USSR acquires concrete features. The regions separated by the Caspian Sea - once quiet Kazakhstan with Central Asia and Transcaucasia are becoming the scene of an ever-increasing concentration of Western interests. Accordingly, Russia is faced with the need to form "geopolitical dams", dissecting the extensive east-west alienation belt in several places in directions from north to south.
Of course, it cannot be argued that the Russian Federation is moving in the direction of the USSR foreign policy doctrine, right up until the collapse of the country, which did not abandon plans for global domination and peripheral territorial increment. Far from it. Nevertheless, the current trend, and most clearly in Transcaucasia, contains signs of adequately following the imperatives of self-preservation in the context of unfriendly designing in the region of their vital interests - the Greater Middle East. Information leaks and comments on condition of anonymity - the indispensable satellites of the situation, indicate a high degree of elaboration, if not far-reaching geostrategic plans, then at least logistic support schemes for military facilities located far south of Russian borders. The possibility of a military solution to the problem of supplying the Russian base in Armenia by breaking through the Georgian military transport blockade is indicated. The 102 Base itself is mentioned in the context of opposing Turkish or Azerbaijani participation in possible military actions against Iran or "around it". Given the likelihood of escalation of the threats addressed to Syria, it acquires real outlines and the need to extend the transport corridor from the base base in allied Armenia further south in the direction of the restless Levant.
The same, if not big, problems exist on another strategic direction, "north-south", passing east of the Karabakh ridge. The prospect of unpredictable developments in the zone of the Caspian hydrocarbon fields and communications, of course, does not suit the West. For Russia, the likelihood of the formation of a length of hundreds of kilometers, saturated with ownerless weapons of space, resting from the Iranian Highland with the edge into the ethnically identical regions of the North Caucasus. There is a tacit consensus around the undesirability to agitate the Caspian “hive”. But Washington’s desire to tame Syria and Iran, to mobilize Turkey, withdraw Armenia from the Russian orbit, involve Georgia into NATO, formalize Kurdish statehood, may well make the situation more mobile, and then Russia's reaction will not slow down. The commencement of the transfer of the aircraft carrying inter-fleet group to the eastern Mediterranean and the pre-war, in essence, preparations in Armenia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are proof of this.
Let's be realistic - in some ways the situation can be described as pre-war. Perhaps a war between the United States and Iran will occur, and this will be the open action of the impending third world war. With the situation that is preserved today, the Third World War has already begun de facto, and right now it is entering a hot stage.
As for the regional players directly, a very difficult situation is developing around Georgia due to the position taken by this country with regard to Iran. Of course, it is difficult to assume that everyone will be friends of Iran, but occupy neutrality, you are neighbors ... Georgia, on the contrary, provided its territory for US troops to launch their attack from their territory. Moreover, the famous autobahn, built between Tbilisi and Kutaisi, actually represents a runway. During the construction, Georgian specialists were not allowed, all materials were delivered from abroad. In addition, an infrastructure was created that is able to service such a runway. In this case, this is a short-sighted policy, since the Iranian leadership has warned that if at least one plane rises in the direction of the Persian state, an adequate response will be inflicted.
In Georgia, this circumstance, it seems, is beginning to reach an understanding of its leader. After his meeting with Obama 30 in January 2012 in Washington, after when Mikhail Saakashvili, as far as we can guess, called the approximate dates of the US attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, it became clear to him that the corridor of his capabilities was extremely limited. The Georgian president realizes that there is a significant imbalance in the region in favor of the United States and its allies.
Those observers are right who regard these demarches as a frank work against the security of Russia on its southern borders. Perhaps Aliyev decided to provide Gabala with the NATO countries, first of all with Turkey. In this case, Moscow will not only lose one of the trump cards in negotiations with Washington on missile defense, but will practically give the station to the Americans, which can help the United States to conduct military operations against Iran.
Of course, both in Baku and Tbilisi, they cannot help but realize that America is far away, neither missiles nor bombs will reach it. Unlike the territory of the South Caucasus, which will be directly affected by hostilities ... It’s not worth hoping that America will quickly deal with Iran according to the Iraqi scenario. Iran belongs to a different "weight category" than Iraq. If a certain number of nuclear warheads are at the disposal of this country, in Tehran they are unlikely to think long and long about the possibility of using them as a means of self-defense. We remember how last year Iranian President M. Ahmadinejad officially warned the leadership of Georgia and Azerbaijan that if at least one plane would rise from their territory towards Iran, they would receive an adequate response. Saakashvili and Aliyev understand that these are not empty threats. Is that why Aliyev gave the order to start an information war with Tehran, which is now in full swing?
Azerbaijan is pushing the Russian military from a strategic facility in Gabala. During negotiations between Russia and Azerbaijan on the extension of the agreement on the lease of the early warning station on a missile attack (SPRN) "Daryal" in Gabala, Baku demanded to increase the rental cost from the current price of $ 7 million to $ 300 million per year. The current rental agreement expires in December 2012. Negotiations have been going on for several months, and the parties have repeatedly stated that they are close to a compromise. Unofficially called the amount of $ 15 million per year. And in the middle of February, information appears about the new requirements of Baku, which are 20 times higher than the previously announced figures. There are no official confirmations or refutations of information from the Foreign Ministry or the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan.
“It’s naive to assume that the republic’s leadership is ready to close the radar station in retaliation for Dmitry Medvedev’s unsuccessful attempts to resolve the Karabakh conflict during summit meetings,” Stanislav Pritchin, an expert at the Center for the Study of Central Asia and the Caucasus of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, writes to Forbes. . He connects the actual expulsion of the Russians from Gabala with the provision of the territory of Azerbaijan to the West and Israel as one of the springboards for the attack on Iran.
According to the expert, Iran in response to attacks by the United States and its allies can cause serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of Azerbaijan, which is mainly focused on the supply of raw materials to Western markets. With the active participation of American and European companies, major oil and gas production and transportation projects have been implemented in the republic: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum gas pipeline are in operation, and large Azeri-Chiran-Guneshli and Shah-Deniz fields are being developed. According to experts, in the nearest 10 years, Western companies should invest about $ 35-37 billion in gas production in Azerbaijan.
According to Pritchin, under these conditions, Baku, as a close economic ally of the West, is a direct target for Iran, and needs serious security guarantees from the United States and its partners. And they are provided - the West is ready to defend its Baku oil by all means.
Israeli company Israel Aerospace Industries is going to sell to Azerbaijan Drones and air defense systems. The Israeli Ministry of Defense stated that this is already a settled issue. The specific amount of the deal is also known - $ 1,6 billion. Also, Israeli instructors will go to Azerbaijan to teach the local military to manage systems unfamiliar to them.
Back in March 2011, the production of Israeli drones began in Azerbaijan. In April of the same year, Israel advised Azerbaijan to buy Heron and Searcher unmanned reconnaissance aircraft from Israel Aerospace Industries. By the way, they are made at the joint Azerbaijani-Israeli military enterprise Azad Systems. In December, the Ministry of Defense Industry of Azerbaijan announced that by the end of 2012 it would transfer 60 Israeli "drones» Aerostar and Orbiter-2M.
On the question of why this is Tel Aviv, the military refused to answer. In neighboring Armenia they immediately expressed fears that Azerbaijan is preparing to recapture Karabakh, and this is not denied in Baku. But it is hardly the case only in Karabakh. The former head of the Mossad, Danny Yatom, mentioned in an interview with the Associated Press that "Azerbaijan may need Israeli weapons at any time." He added: “If the sale of arms to Azerbaijan helps us in case of complications with Iran, all the better.”
Of course, the Russian anti-ship warning system in Gabala is hampered by all this - and in general the presence of the Russian military is undesirable for Western oil companies. They remember well how in 2008, they had to suspend oil pumping through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline due to the war in South Ossetia, next to which the BTC route runs.
It is not surprising that relations between Tehran and Baku are rapidly deteriorating. In January, Baku announced 40’s arrest of “terrorists” from the Islamic Movement of Azerbaijan, accused of organizing terrorist attacks against Israeli diplomats and public figures in Azerbaijan. According to Baku, Iran was engaged in supplying the group. In Tehran, these allegations are denied. And soon the British Times of London published an article where an employee of the Mossad told how his department works in Azerbaijan. According to him, “Mossad” with the Azerbaijani special services are behind almost all the diversions that occurred recently in Iran. Including the murder of nuclear physicist Ahmadi Roshan.
It is difficult to say what role this particular article played, but soon the Iranian Foreign Ministry officially accused Azerbaijan of cooperating with the Mossad and indirectly participating in Israeli sabotage attacks against Iran. In February, the Azerbaijani ambassador to Tehran was twice summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry to give explanations about his country's ties with the "Zionist regime."
An interesting parallel: these actions of Baku coincide with the current suppression of “religious extremism” in more remote, but Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, whose President Emomali Rakhmon is also clearly preparing a turn towards the United States. Rakhmon, with the participation of the American special forces deployed from the Afghan border, is cleaning up the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, which is accused of having links with Iran. Aliyev is actively “pressing” the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, accused of the same. In both countries, there are mass arrests of activists of these parties.
Another surprising coincidence: the amounts that are demanded from Russia for different military facilities in Baku and Dushanbe are absolutely identical. Azerbaijan demanded an absurd $ 300 million per year for Gabala - Tajikistan solves the problem of squeezing Russia out with the requirement of exactly the same $ 300 million for the functioning of the Russian military base in Tajikistan 201. Perhaps this is an accident, but it is very symbolic.
What comes first - the threat from Tehran, or is it still a rapprochement with Washington? The leading expert of the Heritage Foundation, Ariel Cohen, is sure that the latter. “In recent years, relations between Baku and Tehran have steadily deteriorated due to the strengthening ties between Azerbaijan and the United States and NATO,” he said. - Iranian pressure on Baku gives the USA and the West as a whole the right to tougher retaliatory actions. The US must increase the volume of cooperation with Baku, including in the areas of combating terrorism, intelligence and strengthening border security. The Obama administration should take the initiative and push Europe and Turkey to cooperate. ” In this context, the recent proposal of the deputies of the Azerbaijani parliament to rename their republic to Northern Azerbaijan did not go unnoticed. Thus, the Mejlis hinted at the possible after the partition of Iran the annexation of a part of its territory inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis and adjacent to the southern borders of Azerbaijan. The role and place of the parliament in the political system of Azerbaijan are such that without the initiative and approval of President Ilham Aliyev, the deputies would not have decided to put forward a similar (and almost unanimous) proposal.
“Earlier, Baku tried not to touch the theme of ethnic affinity between the population of the two countries in order not to spoil relations with its southern neighbor,” recalls Stanislav Pritchin. “The fact that Azerbaijani politicians violated the taboo means: Baku is ready for the deterioration of relations with Tehran.”
All this is bad for Russia news, although they were predictable. “The development of the“ Iranian ”situation, as well as the ongoing transformation of the global system of international relations, narrows the possibilities of the so-called“ multi-vector ”polarization of the world,” says Alexander Knyazev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “For the countries of the region, this is one of the incentives for self-determination in foreign policy priorities.”
After the division of Iran (today it helps to overcome the energy and partly transport isolation of Armenia from Georgia) Azerbaijan will playfully solve the Karabakh problem. Further, the change of the foreign policy of Yerevan and the expulsion of the Russian military base from Gyumri will become a matter of technology. The west of Armenia is already retreating. Just the other day, French President Nicolas Sarkozy refused to pass a law on responsibility for denying the Armenian Genocide. He did this before the elections, despite the desire to attract a large and influential Armenian community of France. The behavior of the current owner of the Elysian Palace is understandable - after all, an unprecedented redistribution of Eurasia and the whole world, in which France is actively involved, is at stake, starting at least with the Libyan NATO operation.
Russia does not yet have an adequate replacement for the radar station in Gabala, states Stanislav Pritchin, an expert at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences The Voronezh-DM station commissioned in 2009 in the Krasnodar Territory cannot fully replace the facility in Azerbaijan without additional modernization. Moreover, the close cooperation of Azerbaijan with the Western countries in the military sphere will mean a marked decrease in trust between Moscow and Baku and will force Russia to reconsider its plans to deploy military forces in the Caspian region.
Today, Russia has no effective levers of influence on the policy of Azerbaijan - with the exception of battered, ineffective and in practice never realized threats against the recalcitrant neighbors “to drive out guest workers”. 1 March Vladimir Putin, in an interview with foreign media, threatened Azerbaijan with an influx of fellow tribesmen from Iran. “We have special ties with Azerbaijan, as with the country - the former republic of the Soviet Union. Over a million Azerbaijanis live in Russia. And, of course, it would have for us economic, social and political negative consequences, ”he added.
This can be interpreted as a threat to the expulsion of Azerbaijanis to their homeland (if someone forgot - the Moscow authorities already did this 1993). But unlike immigrants from Central Asia, Azerbaijanis in Russia live mostly not by hired labor, but by trade. They are much more united, possess powerful administrative and corruption resources, and in the mass have already acquired the citizenship of the Russian Federation. Today, if we exclude remittances from the Russian Federation to the Azerbaijan Republic, direct economic ties between the two countries are insignificant. Both live off oil and gas exports, getting almost everything they need to live from Western Europe, Turkey, and Southeast Asia.
Russia is also not in a position to shut down vital communications to Azerbaijan, for they pass mainly through the republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Turkey. The only vulnerable area is the Caspian. So far, there is no direct reason to threaten from there Baku Baku, which may appear along with practical actions on laying the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline. But by that time, Azerbaijan, together with Georgia, can be accepted by NATO, the ally of the Russian Federation in the Caspian, Iran - to be defeated and dismembered, and the restless companion in the CSTO, EurAsEC, SCO and CU Kazakhstan - to shrink from Russia from all sides.
“Strategically, Iran is secondary to Russia, but it has an important tactical value, because today it serves as a leading figure on the chessboard,” explains the situation Yuri Romanenko. “It does not allow the Western conglomerate to get a critical advantage before the start of the final“ Russian ”part of the redistribution of the world.” And, judging by the reactions of President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on missile defense, this finally reached the Kremlin.
Given this, Russia would have to more actively protect Iran. Not necessarily the way the Pakistani ally of Pakistan, who threatened Israel with a nuclear strike in the event of an attack on Iranian facilities, did the other day. But Moscow clearly should not have spent years with the commissioning of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, or abandoning the contract to supply Iran with the C-300 air defense systems, which did not fall under sanctions against this country. This would not only allow Russia to save face leftovers, but would certainly cool hot heads in Baku, and not only there.
However, the Kremlin, apparently, has neither a geopolitical strategy, nor a sufficiently sovereign foreign policy. The ruling class of the Russian Federation continues to clutch at the utopia of “Europe from the Atlantic to Vladivostok”. There is an awareness of the threat of a direct collision with the Western military machine, but the money brought to the West and the offshore business are stifling the political will of Moscow. Today there are at least three recent confirmations of this: the scandal surrounding the “blocking” of operations with Iran by VTB, the statement by the former ex-presidential candidate Prokhorov that Syria and Iran are “enemies of Russia” and a public refusal to defend Syria under the mutual assistance agreement.
Materials used:
http://bs-kavkaz.org/2012/03/velikiy-azerbaijan-atakuet/
http://www.contact.az/docs/2012/Analytics/02272385ru.htm
http://www.contact.az/docs/2012/Analytics/02151794ru.htm
http://www.iran.ru/rus/news_iran.php?act=news_by_id&news_id=78623
http://bs-kavkaz.org/2012/03/zakharov-kavkaz-komment-0503/
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