One of the more serious accusations directed against Iran has been its attempt to subvert Azerbaijan’s social fabric by the use of the “Islam factor.” Namik Akhundov, head of the International Department of the Azerbaijani Parliament, remarked to me last May that in many respects, “Iran is a greater enemy than Russia.” He points out that after 1979, Iran exported Islam like Russia exported Communism, and Azerbaijan was one of its major targets. While Iran’s cooperation with Russia on the question of the resources in the Caspian Sea and its collaboration with Armenia in the Armenian-Azeri conflict have been often raised by Azeri politicians, no subject occasioned so much passion as Iran’s attempt to subvert northern Azeri society through the playing of the Islam card.
The technique used by Iran in this process is clear. Over the last three or four years, many of Azerbaijan’s mosques have been taken over by Iranian molla/agents. An hour-long television show is beamed at Baku daily filled with Iranian propaganda that has proven to be especially effective among the refugees.
What is not well known, however, is that Georgia is faced with the same problem; Georgia has a sizable Azeri minority within its borders. At the beginning of August an analytical piece by Liz Fuller was picked up by the Pipeline News under the title “Islamic Fundamentalism in Georgia Linked to Oil Politics.” Based on a report issued by the Georgian Ministry of National Security, Fuller states that Iran is engaged in religious agitation on Georgian territory. The instruments of this agitation are Iranian mollas working among the some 200,000 Azeris living in Georgia’s southern rayons, the report says.
According to the Georgian Minister of National Security, Iranian mollas are trying to persuade Muslims to drop their allegiance to the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Caucasus (based in Baku and headed by the Sheikhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade) and form their own spiritual directorate. One readily recalls that a similar tactic has already been proved to be effective in Azerbaijan. The Islam Party of Azerbaijan, heavily subsidized by Iran, was able to usurp the place of Pashazade’s Spiritual Administration by offering religious rites such as funerals at cut-rate prices or at no cost. This tactic is always very effective among an impoverished population, especially when the official religious leadership stands by and does nothing to counter these moves (such as lowering fees for the same rites).
The Iranian operation was uncovered in Georgia with the interception by Georgian intelligence of a consignment of some 40,000 religious pamphlets, written in Georgian, for Georgian Muslims. A further allegation by the Georgian Minister of National Security was that “intelligence services of ‘neighboring states’” were engaged in similar activity in Adzharia. He concluded that this was all part of the broader struggle for political influence in the region.
Fuller’s explanation of Iran’s tactic in the Transcaucasus is oil, an hypothesis based on Iran’s support of the Russian argument that the hydrocarbon deposits are the shared property of all the Caspian littoral states, and may not be exploited unilaterally by one of them, and the policy of the US government which excludes Iran from participating in the AIOC. She concludes that Iran wants to create at least the myth of Islamic fundamentalism along the route of the yet unbuilt Georgian pipeline intended to carry the oil from Baku to the Georgian ports on the Black Sea. This would possibly put the Georgian pipeline in jeopardy. And Russia, Iran’s ally, would benefit from this. As an explanation, it is not bad, but it fails to take into account Iranian expansionism and the fact that the Azeris in Georgia were the target, as noted in the Georgian Minister’s report. In addition the Georgian pipeline project, like the Baku- Grozny-Novorossiysk pipeline, is also threatened by terrorism which is not triggered by Iranian imperial interests. Oil and gas pipelines and refineries are natural targets of terrorism.
An editorial appearing on August 4 in the weekly New Europe noted that
if the events of the last few years are any indication, oil and gas
facilities in the CIS — especially in the Caucasus region — look set to
become prime targets of armed attacks. After the shooting began between
Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, one of the best
weapons the Azerbaijanis had against the Armenians, who were receiving
military assistance from Russia, was their ability to cut the natural gas
pipeline upon which Armenia depended for most of its energy. Georgia’s
independence-minded regions of Abkhazia, with which Tbilisi has not yet
been able to reach a settlement, and Adzharia have important oil terminals
located on their territory and sit right along prime existing and planned
pipeline routes. Oil company representatives have also expressed concern
over Ankara’s plans to build a pipeline for Caspian and possibly Kazak
oil through eastern Turkey, an area weakened by conflict between government
forces and separatist Kurdish groups.
And officials have reason to worry; terrorism against oil and gas facilities,
aside from their shock quotient, can be immensely damaging. As the
example of Armenia shows, regions cut off from their main source of energy
for any length of time suffer severe economic and social disruption.
The questions about pipeline routes in Georgia and eastern Turkey also
demonstrate that attacks on energy facilities would affect foreign economic
relations; if energy companies are not sure that extracted oil will make
it to the market, they will not invest. Consequently, the climate of fear
and instability prompted by terrorism does nothing to encourage the business
community’s confidence in countries already struggling to convince the
world that they are a good bet. The Caucasus has been a trouble spot
for centuries, and the five years since the fall of the Soviet Union have
been no exception. With regard to the pipeline, it is not only terrorism
that is the problem. It will be recalled that the Baku-Grozny- Novorossiysk
pipeline was closed at the end of August because “numerous valves designed
to steal petroleum have been made in it.”
Terrorism and large-scale theft are no longer just political issues; they are creating an economic problem as well. In this atmosphere of terror as a weapon, the idea that Iran is creating the illusion of Islamic fundamentalism in a basically Christian country seems absurd. There is, however, another, more ominous message in the information given, and that is Iranian expansionism.
It will be recalled that Iran lost the territory of the Transcaucasus to the Russian Empire between 1818 and 1828. This kind of imperialist longing for lost territories and people is one of the elements that contributed to the formation of the ‘Aryan’ ideology in Iran in the 1930s. As we know, this ‘Aryan’ ideology, also known as ‘pan-Iranism ‘, is the primary reason given for the repression of language, and national and other rights of the Azeris in Northern Iran.
Once we acknowledge this, the following IRNA dispatch, filed on May
21 will not be surprising: a scholar, identified only as Dr. Kamal , an
Azeri national, who was doing research in Sweden, told an IRNA journalist
that the Azerbaijan Republic should be annexed as part of Iran; he explained
that “due to conspiracies masterminded by big powers, Iranian territory
disintegrated during certain periods in history. Now that the world has
become sensitive about preserving countries’ territorial integrity, the
present Azerbaijan Republic should regain its original identity,” he said.
This was not an isolated statement, but part of an Iranian campaign.
Quite recently, the Iranian newspaper Abrar reported a letter campaign
by “tens of thousands” of Azeris in Iran signing a petition demanding the
“return” to Iran of 17 cities in the Caucasus, including Baku. At
the same time that Iranian agents have been busy trying to subvert
the social institutions of the Muslim Transcaucasus, an AFP dispatch on
August 27 noted that the Iranian government has demanded that Azerbaijan
“prevent its news media from broadcasting programs hostile to the Islamic
Republic.” Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Nategh -Nuri , in his
meeting with Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Hasan Hassanov , said that “we
stress the need to cut off the hands of elements which hinder a warming
of relations between Tehran and Baku.”
From all the data we can conclude that Iran’s goals are primarily expansionist in the geopolitical sphere, and energy- based in the geoeconomic sphere. These operations do not appear to be conducted by Iran in concert with its ally, Russia. This is clearly evident when one considers Iran’s plan to build a canal from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.
According to an article in the newspaper Segodnya , the Iranian Minister for Transportation and Roads, Ali Akbar Torkan , has announced that Iran is working on a project to construct a 1,000 km-long canal that would link the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf. Iranian experts are looking into ways to use the canal for the transportation of oil from offshore Caspian deposits to its terminals on the Persian Gulf. The costs of this huge project will supposedly be covered by the dividends received from the transport of oil. Such a project will probably have the effect of doing serious ecological damage to the Caspian by raising its water level even higher.
The project will certainly have an impact on the ongoing debate over the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Connecting the Caspian with the open waters of the Persian Gulf could conceivably be considered a means of making that body of water a part of the sea. Baku is arguing that the Caspian is a sea—that the oil reserves of the Caspian in their “maritime” outreach property are not held in common, and can be developed by individual countries. Russian experts have argued, by contrast, that the Caspian is a lake whose resources are held in common by all littoral states, a position that would give Moscow and Tehran a veto over plans to develop any part of the Caspian’s resources. If the construction of the canal does turn the Caspian into a legally recognized sea, Iran would in effect be undermining its own position.
While the canal definitely will end the dispute over the Caspian, many legalists have claimed that the Caspian is a sea, not a lake, and that the Russian position has no legal grounds to stand on. What is important is that Iran has established its willingness to act without taking into consideration the national interests or the perceived sphere of influence of its ally, Russia, in favor of moving forward in the pursuit of its own national, or in this case, imperial interests: namely, to use its geographical position to both spread its authority over the Transcaucasus and to have an impact on international petroleum politics; if it satisfies its dreams of expanding its borders to the North, Iran will justly consider itself victorious.
References
1. Adzharia was ceded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire in 1878. It is unclear what foreign intelligence service he has in mind. Traditional ties would indicate Turkish.
2. David Nissman, “Kurds, Russians, and the Pipeline,”
Eurasian Studies (Ankara: TIKA ,
Spring 1995).
3. Nikolai Koshman , as quoted in New Europe, September 1-7, 1996,
p 10.