The Ominous Plots Of Azerbaijan Regime – OpEd

The kings of Qajar dynasty who ruled Iran from 1785 to 1925 have been historically known as frail and indecisive people who made several concessions to the enemies of Iran and sacrificed the national interest of the Iranian nation for their weakness and infirmity.

During the 140-year government of the Qajar kings, Iran lost many of its strategic provinces to the colonial powers and signed treaties which will remain a stigma in their record forever.

One of these notorious agreements is the Treaty of Gulistan which was concluded between the Imperial Russia and Persia on October 24, 1813 to serve as a peace agreement following the first Russo-Persian War. As a result of this treaty, Iran accepted to cede many of its important northwestern cities to Russia, including what is the modern day Republic of Azerbaijan.

Iran and Russia were supposed to remain in peace following the conclusion of Gulistan Treaty; however, they were once again drawn into conflict in 1826 and engaged in a war which lasted for 2 years. In this juncture and after being defeated by Russia in the war, Iran was forced into signing another infamous treaty called the Treaty of Turkmenchay by which it surrendered several other northwestern cities and lost many rights including the right of navigation in the Caspian Sea.

After all, the Qajar kings finally found out that it’s impossible for them to overpower Imperial Russia militarily, so they opted for peace and reconciliation. However, many years later and when the Qajar dynasty was dissolved and the Republic of Azerbaijan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the latter began to set in motion suspicious movements to cite dangerous territorial claims against Iran which have been repeating over and over again up to now.

In the recent years, the government of Azerbaijan developed close ties with the Israeli regime and saw these relations as an opportunity to deliver a blow to the neighboring Iran. Israel and Azerbaijan established strong and close friendship since 1992. Their relations entered a new phase when the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid an official visit to Baku in August 1997. Since then, Israel sold to Azerbaijan state-of-the-art weaponry including battlefield aviation, artillery, antitank and anti-infantry weaponry.

In 2009, Israeli President Shimon Peres made a visit to the Azerbaijani capital Baku and met with President Ilham Alieyv. During the visit, several Memorandums of Understanding were signed between the two presidents and it was decided that the Israeli company Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd build a factory in Baku to provide the Azerbaijan regime with high-tech armaments and weapons firsthand.

Azerbaijan has always considered its relations with Israel, the number one enemy of the Islamic countries around the world, an alternative for pressuring Iran and damaging Iran’s international image.

Aside from their official ties, it’s said that Azerbaijan and Israel have closely worked together to conspire against the Islamic Republic of Iran, sabotage Iran’s security and jeopardize Iran’s interests in the region.

According to a report published by the United Press International, Israel is infiltrating into Azerbaijan’s intelligence service in order to have the chance to monitor Iran’s nuclear program and establish a military base adjacent to the borders of Iran to be used in the case of a possible military strike against Tehran. “Israel has sold to Azerbaijan a great deal of unmanned aircraft to the government of Ilham Alieyv to use in the Caspian Sea and deploy its intelligence agencies in the borders of Iran to monitor Tehran’s nuclear program,” the report said.

“In terms of economic relations, Azerbaijan is considered to be a strategic ally of Tel Aviv. Azerbaijan has precious oil and gas reserves and exports a great deal of them to Israel as the volume of trade between the two countries reached $1.8 billion in 2010,” UPI added.

But today, a perilous and malicious plot by the Azerbaijan regime is emerging, unveiling Baku’s plots for entering the battlefield with Iran in what can be called a “creeping soft war.”

An investigative and elaborate report published by Iranian news website “Tabnak” on August 13, it was revealed that the high-ranking politicians of Israel and Azerbaijan have designed plans to increase and build up ethnic conflicts in the northwestern Iran, where the majority of Iran’s Azeri-speaking people live.

One part of these plans includes airing anti-Iranian programs by Azerbaijan’s TV and radio stations such as Azer Guney TV. The website of this TV station has a Persian section in which a huge amount of propagandistic claims against Iran can be found. They publish hateful articles and claim that the Iranian government suppresses its Azeri-speaking minority and deprives them of the economic, political and social advantages which the rest of Iranian people benefit from. They frequently advertise that the northwestern cities should be separated from Iran and join the Greater Azerbaijan to take advantage of the complete social and political rights and “be rescued from the oppression of the Iranian government.” This is while that everybody in Iran knows that the Azeri speaking people living in country have been always given the equal rights with the rest of the citizens and have also run numerous important positions in the government.

Another movement by the government of Azerbaijan in order to aggravate ethnic conflicts in Iran is publishing unrealistic and misleading materials and articles in the textbooks of the students. Dr. Hossein Ahmadi, the secretary of the Conference on Reviewing the School Textbooks of the Republic of Azerbaijan which was held in Iran in May 2006, said that in the new textbooks published for the Azerbaijan students, seven Iranian provinces of Ardabil, East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Qazvin, Hamedan, Kurdistan and Zanjan have been named as parts of the Greater Azerbaijan Republic.

“In these textbooks, Iran has been surprisingly called an occupier and the Azeri-speaking provinces of Iran in the northwestern and western parts of the countries have been claimed by the Republic of Azerbaijan,” Ahmadi said.

Local magazines in the north Iranian province of Guilan have also published reports about the ominous plots of pan-Turkist groups in the Republic of Azerbaijan for removing the city of Talesh from Iran and appending it to Baku.

According to Tabnak, American Enterprise Institute and neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen are behind the Israeli-Azerbaijani plots for disintegrating Iran and establishing a Greater Azerbaijan which is consisted of what the secessionists call the “Southern Azerbaijan”, that is the northwestern Iranian provinces of Guilan, Ardabil, East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan.

At any rate, it’s now clear that what’s happening in the minds of the Azerbaijani politicians. They should take seriously the warning of Iran’s armed forces joint chief of staff, General Hassan Firouzabadi who has said that the Baku regime will face grave consequences should it keep up with its anti-Islamic policies including the continuation of ties with Israel. The inauspicious plans of Baku for creating discord and strife in Iran and striking Iran’s territorial integrity will certainly be followed by a decisive and regrettable response by Iran.