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Abstract
This article, unlike the small but rapidly expanding body of literature on Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel, focuses on the role of Iranian influence as a factor strengthening the strategic partnership that has been successfully blossoming between Azerbaijan and Israel in areas of economic, cultural, developmental and more recently, military cooperation. This study aims to examine the key characteristics of bilateral cooperation between the two countries and seeks to investigate the incentives which have aided to create and cement this atypical partnernship. Among a variety of mutual interests that have allowed the Azerbaijani–Israeli partnership to flourish, this study emphasizes the pivotal role of Iranian–Israeli hostilities which correlate with Azerbaijan’s own grievances with Iran. This study argues that the discrete but strategically important partnership between Azerbaijan and Israel is encouraged not only by the existence of mutually beneficial economic incentives but also by the security threats emanating from Iran.
Acknowledgements
Research on this article was carried out in the framework of the Programme P17 “Sciences on Society, Politics, and Media” at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
Notes
1. The Agreement on Disengagement, signed between Israel and Syria in 1974, essentially ended the Yom Kippur War and the fighting on the Syrian front. While there is no peace treaty between Israel and Syria, this agreement has stipulated ceasefire provisions which have helped maintain relative calm in the region. Some of these provisions include setting new territorial lines, creating a buffer zone, calling for disengagement of armed forces, and limitations of armament in certain areas near the border. The United Nations Disengagement Observers Force currently and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) oversee adherence of both sides to this treaty.
2. Additionally, during the turmoil of the early 1990s, thousands of Azerbaijani Jews left the country moving to Israel, from where they still, as a relatively strong community, retain ties with the South Caucasian country.
3. According to Transparency International corruption index, Azerbaijan ranks 127th in the world. For more info, see http://transparency.org/country#AZE for more info.
4. Israel also formulated ties with other non-Arab Muslim countries established after the collapse of the Soviet Union including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
5. Revenues from the export of energy resources make up as much as around three fourths of Azerbaijan’s budget.
6. For ranking, see the 2013 UN Development Report: http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/.
7. See the World Economic Forum’s Global Development Index for more information:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2012-13.pdf.
8. While claims at human rights violations along with the lobbying of America’s Armenian community have made Washington generally reluctant to deliver advanced weaponry to Azerbaijan, Moscow’s position has been marked by unwillingness or incapacity to provide such material to Azerbaijan to ensure that the balance of power is not threatened in the South Caucasus, considered a zone of Russia’s vital interests.
9. In fact, Iranians have frequently protested Baku’s contacts with Israel, a feature of Iranian–Azerbaijani relations that date back to 1992 when Israeli embassy was established in Baku. Intriguingly, since then, under repeated threats from Iran, Azerbaijanis have had to refrain from opening a full-fledged embassy in Israel. Symptomatic in this regard is the reaction of the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to the official visit of Israeli President Shimon Peres to Azerbaijan in 2009, when Ahmadinejad ultimately demanded Ilham Aliyev to cancel the visit of ‘the head of the Zionist entity’ and ‘the main enemy of Muslims’. For more information see: http://www.rferl.org/content/The_Blooming_Friendship_Between_Azerbaijan_And_Israel/1978312.html.
10. Indicative of this was the slaughter in November of 2011 of Rafik Taghiyev, a well-known publicist known for his impressive columns aimed against Islamic radicalism, as well as the theocratic regime in Iran. A fatwa sanctioning Taghiyev’s murder was issued in 2006 by the Iranian ayatollah Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, a move that was approved of by Iranian authorities.
11. For instance, education and broadcasting in Azerbaijani language is not allowed in the predominantly Azerbaijani populated areas of the country’s north-west as an increasingly vocal emancipatory movement of Iran’s Azerbaijani community is being repressed, with dozens of Azerbaijani activists detained in the country’s prisons, tortured or sentenced to death.
12. Information retrieved from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:
http://portal.sipri.org/publications/pages/expenditures/country-search.
13. Namely, they were located on the Qala military base in the proximity of Baku and the Nasosniy military base in the proximity of Sumqayit, Azerbaijan’s third largest city to the north of Baku.
14. In the meantime, Israeli instructors have provided Azerbaijanis training as to how to manipulate with the newly acquired military technologies.
15. Interestingly, in previous years, Israel sold Azerbaijan less sophisticated conventional weaponry (for instance, military vehicles M462 Abir, AIL Storm off-road vehicles, automatic weapon TAR-21, rocket launcher LAW-160, anti-tank missile Spike, automotive artillery gun Soltam Amos and Soltam Cardom, etc.) that could be used in case of a renewed war with Armenia; they were all located in the proximity of Armenia’s borders and along the Nagorno-Karabakh frontline. As the Azerbaijani–Israeli partnership gained momentum, the quality of Israeli weapons being purchased to Azerbaijan increased, as well.