Asia Times
By Kaveh Afrasiabi
Azerbaijan-Armenia clashes have potential grave implications for
neighboring Iran if they escalate into a big power proxy war
After years of an inconclusive cease-fire punctured with occasional
flare-ups, the Azerbaijan-Armenia stand-off over the disputed Nagorno
Karabakh territory and its adjacent areas has in recent days turned
into an inter-state military conflict with potentially destabilizing
implications.
Gone are the previous optimistic predictions that pragmatism and
outside mediation, particularly the so-called Minsk Process led by
Russia, the United States and France, could yield a peaceful
resolution to a vexing ethnic and territorial dispute rooted in
history.
The recent flare-up has put Iran, a regional power that shares a land
border with both warring parties, on high alert. Turkey also shares a
border with both Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Seeking to finally reverse the early 1990s military defeat that
wrested away some 20% of Azerbaijan’s UN-recognized territory,
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has characterized his country’s
military offensive as a campaign that “will end the occupation that
has lasted for nearly 30 years.”
But given the difficult mountainous terrain and the Armenians’
military resources backed by Russia, chances are that Baku will fall
short of that military objective and instead may have to settle for
incremental advances to be utilized as leverage for a next round of
negotiations.
Iran’s Azeri minority
Significantly, Tehran has offered to mediate between Baku and Yerevan.
Although Iran has good neighborly ties with both Armenia and
Azerbaijan, it has been accused by Azerbaijan of taking Armenia’s side
in the past, partly because of Baku’s pro-NATO stance and its cozy
relations with Israel, which has equipped Armenia with drones and
other hardware.
An Azerbaijan victory in the current war may in fact result in the
enlargement of the Iran-Azerbaijan border by approximately 130
kilometers.
But given Iran’s still fresh memory of the Azeri-led irredentist
pressure of the 1990s, advanced through the discourse of a “widening
Azerbaijan” encompassing parts of Iran, it is not in Iran’s national
security interests to deal with an empowered and potentially menacing
neighbor to its north in cohort with its arch-nemesis Israel.
That’s all the more true now that Israel has inserted itself in the
Persian Gulf security calculus through its recent successful
normalization of ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.
Given its sizable Iranian-Azeri minority, comprising a quarter of the
population, Iran is careful not to damage sensitive relations with
neighboring Azerbaijan, which unlike Armenia has refused to join the
Russian-dominated Eurasia Economic Union (EEU). Iran has signed a free
trade agreement with the EEU.
Both Russia and Iran are concerned that Azerbaijan “can become a NATO
outpost in the Caspian in the future, especially if it can defeat and
dominate its neighbor Armenia,” according to a Tehran political
science professor who wishes to remain anonymous.
For now, Iran’s main worry is a spill-over of the conflict into its
territory, new waves of refugees and other unwanted consequences of a
brewing war that bodes ill for regional stability. The Tehran
professor predicts a “spirited effort” by Iran in coordination with
Russia, Europe and the UN to bring peace quickly to South Caucasus.
Yet so far Iran’s call for an immediate cease-fire has fallen on deaf ears.
Pipelines in play
The timing of the new conflict, coinciding with the impending
operationalization of much-anticipated energy pipelines running from
gas-rich Azerbaijan to Europe through Georgia, gives it an
international dimension wrought with geo-economic and geopolitical
ramifications.
The pipelines, which bypass Russia and Iran, are meant to reduce
Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow in sight of US sanctions on
Russia over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany.
Speculation is rife that Putin, already unhappy with perceived US and
European meddling in Belarus, has struck back through Armenia.
The country can easily shell the critical infrastructure in the narrow
Tovus land strip where more than 80% of Azeri energy travels through
the pipelines of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyahn oil pipeline, the South
Caucasus Natural Gas pipeline, as well as the Baku-Tblisi-Kars
railway.
At the same time, Moscow has ordered a massive military exercise in
the Caspian and Black Sea regions with the participation of the
Chinese and Iranian navies, thus sending a clear signal to the West
that it still considers the Caucasus as its natural sphere of
influence.
Inevitably, this will introduce new thorns in Russia’s already prickly
relations with Turkey, which solidly backs Baku in its current bid to
regain the Armenian-controlled territory.
Stalemated negotiation
So far there is insufficient international will to douse the flames
engulfing the South Caucasus, notwithstanding the distractions caused
by the pandemic and the divergent paths of the US and France over how
to handle Iran and Lebanon.
There is also Russia’s determination to make the US pay for its
opposition to Nord Stream 2, and Iran’s growing concerns about
Israel’s perceived security encroachment. From Tehran’s perspective,
Israel is no longer an “out of area” adversary irrelevant to Iran’s
national security calculus.
The only viable path for peace in South Caucasus is at the negotiation
table, in line with the four UN resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh and
the Minsk Group’s peace proposal. Those have called for the
restoration of Baku’s sovereignty over Nagorno Karabakh, respect for
the rights of Armenians inhabiting the disputed territory, the return
of mass refugees and the creation of a land corridor to Armenia.
Hypothetically speaking, Nagorno Karabakh can become another
autonomous enclave similar to Nakhchivan, located between Armenia and
northwestern Iran. Nakhchivan was a part of Iran until the Treaty of
Turkmanchay in 1828 that awarded it to Russia after Iran’s military
defeat.
It’s unclear if local Karabakh Armenians, who look more to the Kosovo
model in the Balkans in their current aspiration for complete
independence from Azerbaijan, will consent to the re-imposition of
Baku’s authoritarian control.
So far, no one in the international community including Iran has
recognized the Kosovo-like efforts of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh,
leading but to one conclusion: the unstable status quo must change
sooner or later, and it can come about only through concerted
international efforts such as the dispatch of a peacekeeping force,
which is so far missing.