Iran’s recent military exercises on its northern border with Azerbaijan (replete with tanks, artillery guns, and helicopters firing at targets) raised eyebrows in Baku. Shortly after the Iranian armed forces began maneuvering near the country’s international border with Azerbaijan on October 1, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev openly questioned Tehran’s motives.
“Every country can carry out any military drill on its own territory. It’s their sovereign right. But why now, and why on our border?” he asked. “There were no such incidents in the 30 years of Azerbaijan’s independence.”
The timing of Tehran’s maneuver may not be as surprising as Aliyev suggests. After its swift victory against Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh war last fall, Azerbaijan has taken major steps toward further deepening military and political alliances with Turkey and Israel, something that has, in turn, undoubtedly raised eyebrows and ire in Tehran.
Turkey and Azerbaijan have long enjoyed close relations since Azerbaijan gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Turkish arms sales to Azerbaijan, which included a fleet of its armed Bayraktar TB2 drones, “surged” in the months leading up to last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Turkey’s support was, undoubtedly, a highly significant factor in enabling Azerbaijan to decisively prevail in that war.
Since then, Ankara and Baku have taken steps to further expand their already extensive defence ties. In June, a triumphant Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined Aliyev to visit Shusha, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh captured from Armenia during the war, where they signed the eponymous Shusha Agreement. The two countries are also holding frequent and regular military exercises on each other’s soil. For the first time ever, a tripartite military exercise between Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Pakistan, known as “Three Brothers”, was held in Azerbaijan in September. The exercises were aimed at improving interoperability between the special forces of those three regional powers and preparing them “for operations in peacetime and wartime.”
Turkey and Azerbaijan often extol their fraternal and kindred ties by proudly proclaiming themselves “one nation, two states.” Their exponentially expanding military ties have led some to use the term “two states, one military” to refer to their burgeoning strategic alliance. Indeed, shortly after signing the Shusha Agreement, Erdogan indicated that Turkey might even consider establishing a military base in Azerbaijan. The prospect of NATO’s second largest military opening a base in the Caucasus would undoubtedly irk Russia. It would also not be a welcome development in Tehran.
Iran and Azerbaijan are Shiite Muslim-majority countries. However, they did not become cordial neighbours after the latter gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. When Azerbaijani President Abdulfaz Elchibey advocated for a ‘Greater Azerbaijan’ in the early 1990s, Tehran feared that Baku could stir up separatist sentiments in its northern Azerbaijan region, which comprises of three provinces: West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, and Ardabil. That region briefly split from Iran in late 1945. Tehran actually enjoyed closer ties with Azerbaijan’s neighbour and rival Armenia, a Christian-majority country. When its borders with rivals Azerbaijan and Turkey were closed off, Armenia’s short border with Iran was dubbed Yerevan’s “lifeline.”
Iran-Azerbaijan ties have come a long way since Elchibey’s single year in power. In last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, Iran remained neutral and tried to broker peace between its warring northern neighbours, likely to prevent a conflagration that could destabilize the wider region and have negative implications for Iran. Speaking of the Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even went so far as to say that, “These lands belong to Azerbaijan, which has every right over them.”
However, Iran, and regular Iranians, remains hypersensitive to any mention of separatism when it comes to its northwestern Azeri-majority provinces. In December 2020, Erdogan attended a victory parade in Baku and recited a pan-Turkic poem by Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh that “laments how the Aras River has separated Azeri-speaking people in Azerbaijan and Iran and is a symbol of the pan-Turkism doctrine that seeks unification of all Turks, including those living in Iran.”
The incident resulted in a brief diplomatic uproar on Tehran’s part given the implications that poem and its reading by Erdogan, who later claimed he thought it was about Nagorno-Karabakh, had for Iran’s territorial integrity.
Then there is Azerbaijan’s relationship with Israel: Iran has long opposed Baku’s economic, political, and military ties with the Jewish state. Azerbaijan sells oil to Israel while Israel sells weapons to Azerbaijan. Israel, for example, sold Azerbaijan Harop loitering munitions (also known as kamikaze or “suicide” drones) that Baku used to devastating effect against Armenian air defense systems in last year’s war. Israel has also sold Azerbaijan advanced Barak 8 air defenses that reportedly shot down an Armenian Russian-built Iskander missile in the final moments of that war. In light of Iran’s latest exercise, there was even a report, albeit unsubstantiated, that Azerbaijan is considering buying Israel’s Arrow 3 air defense system, an ultra-advanced exoatmospheric hypersonic anti-ballistic missile designed for intercepting ballistic missiles as they fly through outer space.
While Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel were always a source of contention for Iran, and remain so, Tehran may feel they are becoming far too extensive to continually tolerate. At present, Iran is worried about a proposed $2 billion arms deal between Israel and Azerbaijan as well as the prospect of Azerbaijan potentially opening an embassy in Israel in the near future. If the latter happens, a recent Jamestown Foundation analysis noted, “Azerbaijan would be the second Shia-majority state, after Bahrain, that has opened an embassy in Israel.”
“And considering that Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran and Iraq are the only four Shia-majority nations in the world, the symbolic and psychological effects of such a move on Tehran would presumably be considerable,” the analysis added.
In light of all this, Aliyev should not be so surprised that Iran would choose the present point in time to flex its military muscles on his border. It’s very clearly Tehran’s way of reminding him that there are certain red lines that it is unwilling to let him cross.
Image credit: Пресс-служба Президента Азербайджана
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