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The Washington Times: â€œIran has staunchly supported Armeniaâ€™s conquest of undisputed Azerbaijani territoryâ€

09 January 2012 10:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Habil Suleymanzadeh â€“ APA. â€œIran has staunchly supported Armeniaâ€™s conquest of undisputed Azerbaijani territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis to the point that Armenia regularly votes against sanctions on Iran in the United Nationsâ€, said The Washington Times in an article by Stephen Blank. â€œIn 2001, Iran shot up an Azerbaijani oil-exploration platform in the Caspian Sea. Apart from blocking the legal resolution of that seaâ€™s status, Iran regularly threatens Azerbaijan with invasion and other unspecified military action if it supports a U.S. base in its country and because of its close ties with Israelâ€.

â€œMore recently, Iranian incitement is clearly behind the anti-government campaign by religiously inclined Shiites, who are protesting the governmentâ€™s â€œanti-religiousâ€ policiesâ€, said Stephen Blank. â€œIn fact, Iran has been threatening Azerbaijan for more than a decadeâ€, he added.

â€œBut the most overt displays of Iranian power and threats have been employed against neighboring Azerbaijan, not least because Tehran suspects Baku of being pro-American and pro-Israeli, but also because it fears that Azerbaijan may seek to exploit the ethnic grievances of Iranian Azerbaijanis in northwestern Iran and detach the area from Iran with great power support. This is not a groundless fear, as the Soviet Union sought to do so in 1920-21 and 1945-46. Nevertheless, this fear of the Azerbaijani minority is more a pretext for Iranâ€™s current threats against Azerbaijan than a rational basis for Iranian policy. Iranâ€™s real fear is Azerbaijanâ€™s support for the United States and Israel and its apprehension that Azerbaijan might become a platform for a U.S. operation against itâ€, said Blank.