IRAN TO HELP AZERBAIJAN IN CASE OF RENEWED AZERI-ARMENIAN CONFLICT: STRATFOR

YEREVAN, MAY 20. ARMINFO. Iran is making a conscious effort to bolster
its military and political standing in the Caspian Sea region, and in
Azerbaijan in particular, says Pentagon’s Stratfor analytical center.

This is an obvious effort not only to carve out strategic space in
the Caspian before Washington can seize it, but also to ward off a
potential U.S. invasion from Azerbaijan. This is the beginning of
what probably will be intensifying competition for control in the
Caspian. On May 16, Iranian media announced that Iranian Defense
Minister Ali Shamkhani and Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev
signed a nonaggression pact in which the two agreed not to allow a
third party to use their territories for an attack against the other.
Tehran’s goal in this pact is obvious — get Baku to prohibit the
United States from using Azerbaijani territory for a potential attack
against Iran.

In recent months, Iran has tried to buy Azerbaijan’s loyalty by
offering political support for Baku’s claims against Armenia over
the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. That political support was
apparently not enough to stop Baku from agreeing to offer Washington
access to military bases on Azerbaijani soil. Iran then had to sweeten
the deal to get what it wanted.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s highly secret surprise visit
to Baku on April 12 to discuss military cooperation between the two
countries undoubtedly flummoxed Tehran. The visit and its secretive
nature might have been news to Iran, but Washington’s increasing
influence in Azerbaijan — and the Caspian Sea region in general —
is not. The United States has several strategic objectives in mind in
becoming the pre-eminent power player in the region, and no Caspian
country stands to lose more from the achievement of those objectives
than Iran. Though the full details of the defense cooperation
agreement the two countries signed have not been made public, it
is very possible that Iran, in return for the nonaggression pact,
offered Azerbaijan military hardware or aid that could come in handy
in renewed conflict with Armenia. Such a move would damage relations
with Armenia, but Iran is an important economic partner for an Armenia
blockaded by both Azerbaijan and Turkey, so Armenia is in no position
to be choosy about its partners.