Epress.am News from Armenia
Unlike its rabblerousing in much of the Middle East, Iran’s involvement in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan has been guided not by religious ideology, but by pragmatic economic and geopolitical goals. In fact, judging from Tehran’s vigorous diplomacy this past summer, Iran may prove to be a decisive stabilizing force in the long-volatile South Caucasus. Some optimistic analysts even suggest that Iran’s “good behavior” in a strategically important part of the world could mark the first steps toward rapprochement between Washington and Tehran, writes Haley Edwards in Foreign Policy.
In the past year, Iranian officials have trekked to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan to announce a series of investments in bilateral economic projects and symbolic friendship-building, including the unilateral waiver of visa requirements for Azeri and Georgian citizens traveling to Iran, and an offer to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the two countries’ longstanding dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Tehran also recently announced it would partner with Tbilisi to build a new Georgian hydropower plant.
This summer, Mikheil Saakashvili, the staunchly pro-American Georgian president, made a point of publicly inviting his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Tbilisi, an event that followed reciprocal visits by the nations’ highest-ranking ministers. And while Iranian support for Armenia is nothing new, Tehran’s proposal this past summer to build a $1.2 billion railroad linking the two countries is seen as a critical economic rescue plan for Yerevan, which has suffered for its economic and political isolation from Azerbaijan and Turkey — the biggest reminder of which was its exclusion from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon gas pipeline, which begins near the Azeri capital and runs through Georgia, around Armenia, and ends on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. This month, Tehran expressed interest in buying nearly 10 times as much gas from Baku as it did last year, and has repeated its desire to build a 200-mile oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Persian Gulf in the future.
“Iran is trying to contribute in a meaningful way to the security and stability in the South Caucasus in order to impress upon everyone the legitimacy and credibility of its role as a regional player,” notes Steven Blank, an analyst at the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. “It’s a pragmatic maneuver above all else.”
Iran’s primary motivation, Blank said, is to keep other countries, particularly the United States, from getting too chummy on its northern border. For Iran, which borders Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — all wobbly nations with a significant US military presence — a US military base in the South Caucasus would be a disaster. Iran is calculating that the way to prevent that from happening is through strengthened alliances with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In Azerbaijan, Iran has recently renewed its calls for the resolution of regional problems by regional, not international, actors. But Tehran’s foreign policy there is primarily shaped by Tehran’s fear of a separatist uprising among Iran’s ethnic Azeris, which make up a quarter of the Iranian population. That fear has served to temper Iran’s encouragement of either religious ideology or nationalism in Shiite Azerbaijan. While Iran’s offer to mediate Nagorno-Karabakh is likely to be ignored by both Azerbaijan and the OSCE, which oversees the diplomatic mission there, Iran has in the past served as an even-keeled mediator in the conflict zone, prizing stability over Islamic fraternity along its northern border.
Above all, Iran’s diplomatic overtures are about one issue: energy. Iran, which sits on 18 percent of the world’s gas supply, has had its eye for years on becoming a transit route for Caspian Sea oil resources to the Persian Gulf. It has also proposed to extend its gas pipeline, which already runs from Iran to Armenia, further north to Georgia and states in eastern Europe. Georgia, desperate to reduce its dependency on pricey and unpredictable Russian gas, has been amenable to the idea, and Armenia, desperate for economic ties, would benefit from the transit route as well.
Realistically, though, that’s not likely to happen any time soon. Iran-watchers caution that Tehran’s ambition may exceed its true reach. Another east-west pipeline from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey — from which Iran was deliberately excluded — is already in the works. Neither Moscow, which currently has a chokehold on the European gas supply, nor Washington, with its policy of containment of Iran, are likely to allow Iranian pipelines to reach Europe. Politics aside, the gas industry hardly sees Iran as a reliable supplier. And despite big talk, real economic partnerships between Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are still small.
Even if everything goes Iran’s way in the South Caucuses, it doesn’t amount to a long-term strategy for the Islamic Republic. Rapprochement with the West doesn’t seem to be in the cards, and it’s unclear how increased regional trade will counter the effects of international sanctions. If Tehran has a grand strategy, it seems to be oriented toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons. At some point, one imagines, that’s also going to have to be the subject of discussion between Iran and its neighbors.