TEHRAN BAKU RELATIONS: A ONE WAY STREET WITH A RED LIGHT
By Ahmad Ali Farhadian
MOSCOW 25TH JAN. (IPS) The slow retreat of Russia from Caucasus as well as from Central Asia and the absence of a well balanced, coherent Russian, policy for this area has paved the way for a more active policy and role for Iran, according to diplomats and political analysts in Moscow.
In a region where oil, politics and great games are inextricably intertwined, where religion, history, traditions and world rivalries are difficult to separate, relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Azarbaijan have a special place of their own.
In economic field, Iran, with an Azeri population twice the size of that of the Republic of Azarbaijan (RA), two provinces named Azarbaijan (Eastern and Western) and more than 20 millions Turkic speaking people, is one of the RA's most important trade partners, the volume of bilateral exchange standing between 200 to 300 million US Dollars. Nonetheless, traders, businessmen and government officials from the two neighbouring countries are not happy, as seen from the last meeting of Iranian and RA economic experts where both side complained about the lack of initiatives compared to the wide scope of possibilities for a much greater co-operation.
But on the diplomatic terrain, the situation is "just catastrophic", according to one insider. Explaining the reasons, Mr Alireza Bigdeli, the Iranian Ambassador to RA is quoted to have attributed the increasing tensions between Tehran and Baku to the victory of the ayatollah Mohammad Khatami and to "changes" in Iranian foreign diplomacy.
Ever since he came to power, the new Iranian president did not hide his wrath at the hate-filled anti-Iranian policy of Mr Heydar Alyev, the Iranian-born president of RA, a former president of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azarbaijan, a veteran KGB officer who served as a deputy to Yuri Andropov, one of the last leaders of the former Soviet Union.
Actually, the RA's policy, when looking at the Iranian and the region's map, has not change since the days when Abolfazl Ilcibey, the former RA president called for the "return to the mother land of the separated pieces of the great Azarbaijan nation" while paying tribute to the mausoleum of Ataturk in Ankara. In the RA's official language as well as in the country's media, there is no other word than "Southern Azarbaijan" when it comes to referring to the Iranian Azarbaijan.
From the beginning of the war between Azarbaijan and Armenia over the Armenian enclave of Nagorni Gharabagh and the subsequent presidential elections in the RA which saw the ousting of Ilcibey and the come back of Alyev, Baku has never forgave the Islamic Republic of Iran for its outright support of Christian Armenia against Shi'a Muslim Azarbaijan. Moreover, Baku has accused Iran to supply Armenia with large quantities of Russian-made weapons to be used in Gharabagh by Armenian separatists.
Islamic Iran strongly criticise RA's overt and sometimes provocation secularity, which it translates as perversity in its controlled press, as against the restrictions imposed over Iranians by a religious system. Recently, the hard line press accused the Azarbaijan ambassador in Tehran, Alyar Safarli of "deliberate provocation and disregard for diplomatic principles" for, allegedly, having thrown a party filled with booze and sex, and more offhandedly, has dared to reduce the "righteous struggle of Hussein and his followed to "nationalistic and historic tales and mythology of Azarbaijan".
Tehran is also very angry and worried about calls and propaganda activities deployed in Baku for the unification of North (the RA) and South (Iranian) Azarbaijan, "two parts of the same nation, sharing same culture, religion and language", according to "unionists" of both sides.
Iran accuses Azarbaijan of playing in the hands of Tukey, Israel and the United States, in "wrecking and dismantling" the Islamic Republic.
In fact, clandestine leaflets and publications, mostly printed in Baku, are circulating in major Iranian Azeri cities, like Tabriz, calling for the creation of a Greater Azarbaijan. "The strong appeal for such publications is explained because of harsh restrictions imposed on Iranians by the mullahs in Tehran, a growing dissatisfaction of the population with the Islamic regime and resentment among Azeris to be treated as citizen of second class denied their basic cultural rights", says on Iranian dissident Azeri
Islamic Iran do not hide its anger at Azarbaijan's playing, in the one hand, the US-Turkish-Israeli political cards in this strategic zone and on the other, for bringing in American and Western oil firms for exploiting oil from the Caspian basin, said to contain one of the world's largest oil and gas reserves probably as big or even bigger than those of the Persian Gulf. Like Moscow, Tehran insist that none of the five nations bordering the Caspian Sea, which are Iran, Russia, Turkemenistan, Kazakhstan and Azarbaijan must go ahead with taping the energy resources of this region before its juridical situation is fixed by new agreement, these waters being officially divided between Iran and the former Soviet Union.
From Baku's point of view, the Islamic Republic has not been able to demonstrate its capabilities as a trusted and valuable partner, both economically and politically, to respond to Azarbaijan's needs and, on the other hand, Tehran finds that the Republic of Azarbaijan is not the country it thought it should be.
"In one word, Tehran and Baku's relations are like a narrow one way road blocked in its middle with the red light on, at least for the time being", says a veteran Azarbaijani observer in Moscow.
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