The Iran War Theater’s “Northern Front”:
Azerbaijan and the US-Sponsored War on Iran
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Apr 9 2007
In a timely decision, Azerbaijan recently (mid-March 2007) granted NATO the permission to use two of its military bases and an airport to “back up its peace-keeping operation in Afghanistan,” including support for NATO’s “supply route to Afghanistan.” NATO Rep Simmons insists that the agreement has nothing to do with US plans to wage aerial bombardments on Iran. Media sources in Baku have intimated that this timely agreement is directly related to ongoing US-Israeli-NATO war plans. Its timing coincides with US naval deployments and war games in the Persian Gulf. The airport and two military bases are slated to be “modernized to meet NATO standards.” Washington has confirmed in this regard that it would support the modernization of a military airport in the framework of the Individual Partnership Action Plan signed between Azerbaijan and NATO.
Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan released a statement (BBC transl. Apr 5 2007):
Azerbaijan’s territory will not be at the disposal of any country for hostile acts against neighbours.
This announcement by the Azeri Defense Ministry was in response to an off-the-cuff statement by US Under-Sec State Bryza at a press conference in Georgia on Mar 30 2007, quoted in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Apr 2 2007, to the effect that the US hopes for permission to use airfields in Azerbaijan for military purposes:
“A lot of planes overfly Georgia and Azerbaijan on the way to Afghanistan. Should it prove necessary, we would like to be able to use an airfield in Azerbaijan,” the US diplomat said, answering a question concerning the modernization of a military airfield in Azerbaijan with US help. According to Azerbaijani political scientist Zardusht Alizade, the NATO/US military agreement with the Baku government pertains to several Azeri airfields, which could be used to receive and service US/NATO aircraft. Baku may also help the US with data on ballistic missile defense. Moreover, the words of the Azerbaijani authorities do not always match their deeds, and the statement of the Defense Ministry may be anything but the last word on the subject. Alizade said: “If the US Administration appeals to Aliyev and the latter summons the courage to turn the request down, all the better for him. I do not really think that he will want to peeve Washington.” According to the political scientist, the consequences of this step may be quite dire. Tehran has already proclaimed its readiness to strike at strategic objects nearby which are important for the US. “Iranian capacities are not to be underestimated. A single division of its armed forces can occupy all of Azerbaijan without a second thought. I only hope that this is some sort of political game and that the US does not really intend to strike at Iran,” Alizade said.
Azerbaijan is also strategic in view of its maritime border with Iran in the Caspian sea. In this regard, the US Navy is involved in supporting the Azeri Navy, in the area of training. There is also an agreement to provide US support to refurbish Azeri warships in the Caspian sea. The US-sponsored Caspian Guard Initiative was launched in 2003 to “coordinate activities in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan with those of CENTCOM and other US government agencies to enhance Caspian security.” The initiative was implemented under the cover of preventing narcotics trafficking and counter-terrorism. Its ultimate objective, however, is to provide CENTCOM with a strategic naval corridor in the Caspian sea basin. The US has also participated in joint Naval exercises with the Azeri Army’s 641st Special Warfare Naval Unit, headquartered at the Azeri Naval Station outside Baku. More generally, both the US and NATO are in the process of deepening their military cooperation with Azerbaijan. In recent developments, military-political consultations between the US and Azerbaijan are scheduled to be held in Washington in the second half of April 2007, according to a US Embassy source in Baku. (APA News, Apr 4 2007):
The consultations will cover issues on strategic cooperation, Azerbaijan-NATO relations, the mutual activity of both countries in Iraq and Afghanistan and some other issues.
The timing of these consultations is crucial. They coincide chronologically with a process of advanced military planning. Azerbaijan could be the object of retaliatory strikes by Iran, if the country’s military bases are used by NATO-US forces as a launch pad for waging war on Iran. Media sources in Baku have suggested that retaliatory bombings by Iran could include Azeri oil fields and oil and gas pipelines. The strategic Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which links the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, could also be a target. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is controlled by an Anglo-American consortium led by BP.
In early Apr 2007, Iran deployed troops and military hardware along the Iranian-Azerbaijani border. According to an Apr 4 2007 report of the Azerbaijani news agency Turan:
Military experts think that the deployment of troops and hardware pursue defence ends. This means that the troops are being pushed forward to repel attacks. The start of an information war is obvious. An intelligence expert has told Turan that recent publications in the media saying that Iran has drawn up a list of facilities in Azerbaijan that will be bombed in case of a US attack are a glaring example of this. Most likely, the reports were prepared and passed to the mass media by the Iranian secret services to exert psychological pressure on Baku. The goal is to deter Baku from supporting Washington in a military conflict with Tehran.
US and allied naval deployments are concentrated in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. The March 2007 NATO/US agreement with Baku, while building upon previous military cooperation agreements, specifically reinforces what might be described as a “Northern Front” whereby Azeri military bases including airfields and naval facilities in the Caspian sea would be used by NATO and US forces in the case of US-sponsored attacks on Iran. If this were to occur, several Central Asian countries could be drawn into the conflict, leading to a process of military escalation. The latter could also extend into a ground war in which Iran would target US, British and NATO facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Niqnaq 
9 Comments
What is the % of Azeri’s who live in Iran. What kind of relationship they have with the Persian’s and other ethnic minorities in Iran?
I assume that it’s perfectly OK. However, it would be possible for enemies of Iran to create false-flag terrorist outfits and instruct them to claim that whetaver they did was being done “in the name of Azeri Liberation”. Similarly with many other ethnic and religious groups: the danger is not them as such, but false-flag terrorism done in their name. That happened with Rigi and his pretended “Baluchi Liberation Army” on the other side of ran, the south-east. There have also been attempts to ignite Arab vs. Persian “liberation movements” in the especially oil-rich, Arab-majority south-west of Iran.
Have you seen this? The 18th chapter of Solzhenitsyn’s book, the only one not translated into English, describes Jewish exploitation of the power situation of the 20s and the “affirmative action”-like policies meant to redress Tsarist racism; at several points comparison is made to other minorities and Central Asian peoples, particularly in an anti-Russian sentiment.
Hmm, Googling “Azeris in Iran” turns up many interesting pieces, one of which points out that Mousavi is an Azeri unsupported by his community. It is the general consensus that Azeris in Iran are like Irish in modern America, almost a merely nominal ethnicity maintained for holiday purposes, with no difference in standard of living between Azeri and Persian people.
Um, that eighteenth chapter is the only one that is translated into english, not the only one that isn’t!
The book is the only one to not be properly translated by a publisher in keeping with Solzhenitsyn’s reputation — it’s being translated as a near volunteer effort, a real samizdat, eight years after its release — and so far two and a fifth chapters are in Ingiris at the site linked. If you want to be technical apparently this isn’t even the whole 18th chapter (they started with 20 for some reason).
See, “book” is the last item in the fragment and related or parenthetical fragments refer to it. We have that problem with “his” directed back at two male things all the time. Should’ve said “book” a second time, would’ve worked as emphasis, sorry.
Wikipedia have an interesting little page on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together
As usual in these discussions, “antisemitism” is implicitly defined as anything that might arouse hostility toward Jews, whether as individuals, as communities, as organised groups, as political forces, as religious influences, as members of a nation-state, or as anything else. The implication of this sort of implicit definition is that you are only allowed to say nice things about Jews.
Here is an interesting dirty trick, nailing him for something completely different, evidently not entirely written by him, which is asserted to demonstrate “what he really meant”:
It’s especially interesting that the final part of that critique was developed on the so-called “Radio Liberty”. It shows that the US uses the Jews as nothing more or less than a stick to beat the other peoples with.
Like the British Empire and every other power that hoped to woo Jewish money before them. You know our favorite example of this — the exiled White Russian nobility who demanded to be returned to Petrograd to among other things save the Jews from the Red and Black atrocities; meanwhile Reds Jewish or otherwise were solidly philo-Semitic, Makhno punished anti-Semitic violence with death and the Whites were easily the single worst enemy of the Jews in Europe after the Medieval Papacy setting themselves up as saviors like, well, Ahmad Chalabi.