Why does Iran support Armenia and not Azerbaijan?

Who started the Armenia-Azerbaijan war?

In the 1990s Europe was focussed on the conflict in Yugoslavia. Srebrenica and other events painfully showed the whole humanity how bad the European Union was at reaching agreements. While everyone was focussed on Yugoslavia, Armenia, taking advantage of the situation and with the tacit support of the Russians, declared war on Azerbaijan, a newly independent country. 

This first war, the 1992 Karabakh War, was initiated by Armenia following Armenia's calls for unification with an autonomous republic within Azerbaijan. At the time, Armenia used the political instability in Azerbaijan to its advantage, skilfully timing it as a "casus belli" to protect the so-called rights of Armenians living in Azerbaijani territory, and quickly occupied 20% of Azerbaijani territory. This meant territorial gains far greater than the size of the so-called autonomous Armenian republic. According to some commentators, in those years the Armenians could have marched all the way to Baku if they had wanted to. The Azeris were in a truly defenceless situation. As a result, Azerbaijan, which had to accept the Armenian occupation and atrocities in practice, patiently waited for its time to come for almost 30 years.

As a matter of fact, the war that took place in 2020, which we can call the Second Karabakh War, was initiated by Azerbaijan to regain some of the territories lost in 1992. This justified war enabled Azerbaijan to regain the majority of the territories it was entitled to, but for various reasons, it was not possible to take back all the territories it lost in 1992 from Armenia. From a strategic point of view, Azerbaijan's greatest strategic gain here was the recovery of a trade route linking the Azerbaijani mainland to Turkey and Nakhchivan.

In September 2020, Azerbaijan's spectacular victory over Armenia also reinforced the value of unmanned aerial vehicles and gave new clues about the future of modern warfare. By flying small UAVs (mini-drones), which are also used as target drones, over areas where Armenian military units, radars, defence systems and artillery are located, Azerbaijan broke new ground in real-time target detection and identification. Thus, the targets, which were located with great accuracy, were hit by larger armed UAVs, aircraft and helicopters, and even artillery batteries, leaving Armenia unable to defend itself after a short war lasting about 40 days. Azerbaijan, which won the war, was not successful in dictating the final peace terms it desired in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, undoubtedly due to the interference of the powers behind Armenia. Under these conditions, despite the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it was not possible to draw the final borders, and it was observed that in addition to the mutual crossings in the region, especially the Armenian side tried to reach natural borders in its favour by making de facto border adjustments. The Aliyev government, which declared that it could not remain silent in this situation, demanded Pashinyan to take a step back, but this was not possible. Therefore, there was an expectation that the conflicts on the ambiguous border line between the parties might one day flare up again. As a matter of fact, the expected happened. The military operation launched by Azerbaijan to clear Armenian 'gangs' from the territories that Azerbaijan considers its own, which it calls an "anti-terrorist operation", has been going on for several days.

As of yesterday, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence announced that the Armenian groups in Karabakh had laid down arms. Ministry spokesman Colonel Anar Eyvazov said: "With the surrender of the Armenian forces, the anti-terrorist operation in Karabakh has been stopped."

Even if the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan has stopped today, no one can guarantee that the region will not be set on fire again in the near future. There are numerous reasons to think so. From this point of view, the policies pursued by other states with a strong interest in the region, which feed on the historical problems between these two countries and want to maximise their own strategic interests by taking one side or the other, continue to be important. In this respect, which country supports which country in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts and tensions is important and this situation has become the key to a regional perspective on the future.

Who supports whom in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict?

States that stand closer to Azerbaijan

Turkey 

Turkey has always been an ally of Azerbaijan. Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani territory that has been trapped on the Turkish-Armenian border for almost a century, has existed to this day largely thanks to Turkey. In the 1992 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Turkey, claiming to be the guarantor of Nakhchivan's protection in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, declared that it would not remain silent in the event of an attack on the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

The Turkish people, who recognise Azerbaijanis as brothers and sisters, have been the guarantor of the existence of a strategic partnership between Turkey and Azerbaijan. In addition, commercial, economic, political, military and cultural relations between the two countries have increased in many fields, including the transportation of Azerbaijani natural gas to Western markets. And they continue to increase. 

Even if none of these things happen, being in close relations with a country like Azerbaijan, which is the enemy of Armenia, against the unjust claims of Armenia, which is the spoilt child of the West and has succeeded in marketing the 1915 deportation as a genocide to the whole world through the Armenian diaspora, should be seen as a requirement of rational reason in Turkish foreign policy.

Israel

In recent years, Israel has not hesitated to show that it is a loyal ally of Azerbaijan, in some areas more closely aligned than the Turkish-Azerbaijani strategic partnership. Although Israel claimed neutrality in the 1992 war, it provided indirect support to Azerbaijan by supplying arms to Azerbaijan. Today, Israel is Azerbaijan's largest arms supplier, and no one denies that the success of the Azerbaijani Army is due to Israel's high quality weapons, especially armed autonomous drones.

Russian Federation

Despite the fact that Russia has joint defence agreements with Armenia and military bases in the country, especially since the Velvet Revolution, Putin's government has made no secret of the fact that they do not get on well with the pro-Western Armenian leaders. Therefore, I believe that Russia, while practically supplying arms to both sides, is also making it clear that it wants Armenia to suffer a little in order to teach it a lesson. Everyone knows the extent of the Kremlin's influence in the Caucasus region. To expect the Russians to play ball in Russia's backyard in a way that the Russians do not want is to get away from reality. In order to understand Russia's interest in the region and its red lines, it is necessary to see how it intervened in Georgia from the night of 7/8 August 2008 and how it has largely cut this country off from the Western world, including NATO and the EU. I strongly suspect that Putin's unwillingness to end the tension between the two countries is the reason why the border problems between the two countries have not been resolved after the ceasefire achieved with Moscow's intervention, although Putin is perhaps the only person in the world who can end the tension between the two countries in some way.

It can be said that Russia has established a tacit alliance with Azerbaijan against Armenia. Thus, acting together with Turkey and Azerbaijan against the West's South Caucasus agenda centred on Armenia and partly Georgia, exploiting the region's oil and gas potential, and using the Azerbaijan axis, which offers alternative lines to circumvent sanctions, are seen as rising opportunities for Moscow. On the other hand, despite the paranoia among Armenians, it is known that no country is a threat to the existence of Armenia. The fact that there is no indication that Azerbaijan and Turkey have such an agenda is also unwarranted. In case the geographical borders in the region change in a way to destroy Armenia, Armenia's biggest ally will again be the Russians. 

States Standing Closer to Armenia

France

France does not hesitate to openly accuse Turkey and Azerbaijan at every opportunity. Macron's language shows us that France is on the side of Armenia. One of the reasons for this may be the presence of a large Armenian community in France. France, which is also the flag-bearer of the so-called Armenian Genocide, is a country that always uses a critical language against Turkey. Turkey's sister country Azerbaijan, too, cannot escape being the target of this criticism. 

Iran

The most critical and in a sense incomprehensible country for Turkey and Azerbaijan is Iran, which is a sympathiser and even a party to Armenia. We observe that a harsh and aggressive tone is being used in the Iranian press towards Azerbaijan. Some Iranian commentators even emphasise that Iran should pursue a more aggressive policy towards Azerbaijan. This points to the negative course of Iran-Azerbaijan relations.

First and foremost, Iran does not want Turkey's influence in the Caucasus to increase, so it supports Armenia in order to prevent this. Iran, which supports a country belonging to the Christian world, pursues a policy that is not in an allied relationship with Azerbaijan at the diplomatic and international level, despite the fact that it has a Shiite majority like itself. This may come as a surprise, but in the end, Iran does not hide the fact that it constructs a world according to its strategic interests. Supporting Armenia as a buffer state between Turkey and Azerbaijan has always been a better option.

This is why Iran has supported Armenia in the past. Today, Iran has better relations with Armenia than Azerbaijan. Due to the presence of the Azeri population within its borders, Iran considers every step towards the establishment of a Greater Azerbaijan as a threat to its territory and territorial integrity, which should be seen as a natural reflex. 

Iran has visibly distanced itself from Azerbaijan due to its policy during the Second Karabakh War in 2020. Azerbaijan lost the piece to Turkey. In this case, Iran, in its struggle for regional leadership with Turkey, has built its relations with Armenia as a counter-thesis in the context of Azerbaijan. In fact, Iran, which has pursued a foreign policy in line with the regional expectations of Armenians since 1991, has lost Azerbaijan for the sake of Armenia. In other words, the fallacy of the Azerbaijan strategy adopted by Iran has been clearly revealed these days. In fact, Iran's approach to the problems in the region has always been seen as problematic, as it has not developed a flexible bilateral strategy similar to Russia's bilateral flexible strategies with the South Caucasus countries. Recent events have also shown that Tehran is behind in reading the developments in the Caucasus. Iran is not only criticised for the consequences of its policies towards Azerbaijan. At the same time, it also fails to play favourably with Russia and Armenia. For example, after the Second Karabakh War, Iran could not be involved in the process following the ceasefire agreement reached on 10 November 2020 with the active efforts of Moscow. At that time, while Russia was there as a peacekeeping force and Turkey was there as an observer, Iran's absence was considered a humiliating development for Tehran. Iran could not get a significant share in the post-2020 restructuring of Karabakh to unlock its economic potential. It took a negative stance in the Zangezur Corridor discussions and ignored the commercial vitality it would bring to the region. It has even stayed away from developing with Azerbaijan similar to Turkey's normalisation initiatives with Armenia. 

In the end, it should be noted that Iran's policy towards Azerbaijan has two soft underbellies:

Firstly, the Azeri origin living in Iran has a population of approximately 30-35 per cent (considering Iran's population of 86 million, this is a serious, large population. I have already mentioned that Iran considers Azerbaijan as a threat to its territorial integrity. Although I am aware of the existence of some assessments that Azerbaijan has increasing historical revisionist and irredentist ambitions on Iranian territory, I consider that such a potential of modern Azerbaijan vis-à-vis Iran cannot exist even in the long term. On the other hand, there is a possibility that some in Azerbaijan may be supporting attempts to incite and foment separatism among Azeri citizens in Iran against Tehran. If there is such a situation, combating them is Iran's internal affair, a national security issue. However, I believe that this situation does not require Iran to break away from Azerbaijan to the extent of being pro-Armenia. First and foremost, the Tehran administration should realise that this exclusionary Iranian policy is damaging the developing commercial dynamics in the region.

The second is the existence of Iran's nuclear weapons programmes and the negative attitude of the Western world, especially Israel, towards this for years. In this respect, the deepening of Azerbaijan-Israel relations has been sufficient for Tehran to marginalise Azerbaijan. Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards must be concerned that Israel could use Azerbaijani territory as a launching base against it in the event of a possible war. However, President Reisi must be aware that an Iran detached from the Azerbaijani context will weaken Iran's influence in the Caucasus in many ways and that the Israeli-Azerbaijani rapprochement cannot be prevented.

Conclusion

One of the most prioritised strategies of Azerbaijan's foreign policy is not to turn into a geopolitical competition area between Russia and the West and Turkey and Iran. An analysis of the balance policy formulated by Heydar Aliyev reveals this search for balance. Azerbaijan is a country that aims to present itself not as an area of Iran-Turkey rivalry, but on the contrary, as an area of co-operation between the two countries. However, Azerbaijan's search for balance started to change in favour of Turkey after the Second Karabakh War. While Azerbaijan-Turkey relations gained depth in the Second Karabakh War, Iran-Azerbaijan relations were severely hit. While this situation transformed Iran-Azerbaijan relations, it also increased Baku's need for Ankara to contain Iran.

Reference

Arif Keskin, Where are Turkey-Iran Relations heading? Fikir Turu, 19 September 2022, https://fikirturu.com/jeo-strateji/iran-turkiye-iliskileri-nereye/

Defensehere News, Azerbaijan: Armenian groups in Karabakh lay down arms, anti-terrorist operation halted, 20 September 2023, https://www.defensehere.com/tr/azerbaycan-karabagdaki-ermeni-gruplar-silah-birakti-antiteror-operasyonu-durduruldu