Azerbaijan needs security guarantees if US invades Iran, paper says

Zerkalo website, Baku
3 Mar 07

Azerbaijan will need security guarantees from the USA if the latter
decides to punish Iran for ignoring warnings about its nuclear
programme by taking military action, but Azerbaijan will hardly be able
to remain neutral, an Azerbaijani newspaper believes. The Kurds in Iran
might support the USA which would be dangerous to ethnic Azerbaijanis
in Iran, the paper said. If the USA did go ahead and invade, then
Azerbaijan and Turkey should take the Azerbaijani-populated areas in
Iran under their control to prevent ethnic cleansing. The following is
excerpt from the report by Rauf Mirqadirov headlined "They will not
leave us in peace even if we try to preserve ‘neutrality’ in the Iran
crisis", published in Zerkalo newspaper website on 3 March; subheadings
have been inserted editorially:

Iran ignores warnings about its nuclear programme

The deadline set by the UN Security Council for Iran to cease its
nuclear programme expired on 21 February. Iran, naturally, has refused
to carry out this request, so now the problem of its nuclear programme
is being elevated to a higher diplomatic level. Open economic sanctions
by the UN against Iran are now almost inevitable, or at least, the USA
will insist on them. Besides, two US assault carriers are already in
the Persian Gulf. Despite the fact that officials in Washington deny
the likelihood of military action, practically everyone throughout the
world, including our region, and even in Armenia, is waiting, as they
say, in anticipation.

"A US attack on Iran will have very negative consequences for Armenia
which finds itself between the devil and the deep blue sea," Armenia’s
Iran expert Tadevos Charchyan has said in an interview for
PanArmenian.net website. He believes the choice will be a very
difficult one: on the one hand, there are the financial and economic
aspects, and on the other, there is neighbourly and friendly Iran, with
whom Armenia has much in common. Armenia cannot remain neutral because
there is much that links us [Armenia] with the international community.

What Charchyan is really saying is that at the end of the day Armenia
will have to support the sanctions of the international community,
including military sanctions. In other words, he says, Armenian today
must be prepared to abandon "neighbourly and friendly Iran".

[Passage omitted: Problem for Russia and Armenia is that USA wants to
replace current Iranian regime because if it acquires nuclear weapons
it will become more aggressive]

Armenia to follow Georgia in supporting USA

We would like to make the point that Georgia has stated officially that
it is prepared to examine the question of the deployment of US radar
stations on its territory. Georgia has made its position basically
clear. Whatever the USA requires is acceptable to Georgia. In other
words, in the event of military action against Iran the USA can count
fully on Georgia’s support.

And, in actual fact, Armenia has no other choice, either. It can no
longer allow itself the luxury of an anti-US position in the event of a
military action against Iran, because its outcome has already been
determined. Anti-Americanism in this event would mean a complete
blockade and Armenia’s isolation for many years.

[Passage omitted: Economist magazine carried report on Armenia’s
increasing isolation over international railway project and increasing
dependence on Russia.]

The problem is that if Russia lets Washington "deal with" Iran, then
Armenia will lose all its importance to Moscow as an outpost, because
the whole of the South Caucasus will automatically come under the
sphere of US interests. Moreover, Armenia is not one of those countries
that is prepared to remain a Russian outpost on "hunger rations". And
nobody, including Armenia, is prepared to be obedient to Russia for
nothing. But the whole problem is that in that case there will be no
reason to pay Armenia.

Azerbaijan cannot "stand aside"

Despite the solemn statements of officials at the highest level,
Azerbaijan will not be able to stand aside in the event of a US
military action against Iran. In the first place, whether we like it or
not, they will not leave us in peace.

The former president of Iran [Akbar] Rafsanjani, whose supporters today
comprise the majority in the Supreme Spiritual Council, recently said
that there are US military bases in Azerbaijan. Essentially, this means
that strategic facilities in Azerbaijan have already been included by
the Tehran regime in the list of targets against which will be liable
to retaliatory strikes in the event of the US military action against
Iran. We cannot defend ourselves and Russia has no intention of doing
so. This means that whether we like it or not, we will still need
certain guarantees of security from the West, and to be precise, the
USA.

Second, we ourselves cannot stand aside, because about 30 million of
the Iranian population are Azerbaijanis, and most of them live in
Southern Azerbaijan [northwestern Iran]. Suffice to recall that the
preservation of "neutrality" in the Iraq crisis cost Turkey dearly.
Moreover, the USA’s "allies", the Kurds, are essentially engaging in
ethnic cleansing in relation to the Iraqi Turkomans (in fact, ethnic
Azerbaijanis), but they have no intention of declaring the creation of
a Kurdish state on the border with Turkey.

One should remember that in both Iran and in Iraq the Kurds, unlike the
Azerbaijanis, are pretty well armed and are fighting against the
government forces. If one assumes that the joint Iraqi-Iranian Kurd
detachments might on this occasion, too, act as allies of the USA, then
we might be facing a new kind of ethnic cleansing.

If events develop in this direction the joint Azerbaijani-Turkish
forces will be left with no other choice than to take the territories
populated by the Azerbaijanis under their control. In the course of
time it was the Azerbaijani president himself who literally a year ago
said there are not 8 million of us in the world, but 50 million.