Iran-Azerbaijan: Offence Meant, and Taken

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have gone from bad to worse in recent weeks after Baku denied entry to a top Iranian official and Tehran recalled its ambassador.

Just when Azerbaijan was gearing up to host the Eurovision Song Contest, Iranian officials seized the opportunity to lay into it, saying the event was immoral and inappropriate for a Muslim country.

The response in Baku was a protest outside the Iranian embassy, during which participants held up posters lampooning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Following the demonstration, Iran recalled Ambassador Mohammad Bahrami for consultations. The Azerbaijani ambassador, Javanshir Akhundov, was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran, and has since returned to Baku – officially for personal reasons.

A week later, on May 29, Farid Asiri, a personal representative of Supreme Leader Khamenei, was barred from entering the country when he arrived at Baku airport.

Elman Abdullayev, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, said Asiri did not have the right entry documents.

Abdullayev went on to address the hostile remarks coming out of Tehran, in particular the allegation that Eurovision was to include a gay rights parade.

"Iran claimed Azerbaijan would host a gay parade. Anti-Azerbaijan protesters in Iran used derogatory words about our nation and our president. That is unacceptable. No one can dictate terms to Azerbaijan. We had to respond appropriately,” he said.

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have been troubled ever since the latter gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Baku has long believed that Iran backs its arch-rival Armenia, while Tehran is suspicious of Azerbaijan’s friendly ties with western countries. Other areas of friction include a demarcation dispute in the Caspian Sea, and the position of Iran’s substantial ethnic Azerbaijani population.

Relations took a serious downturn at the beginning of this year, when Azerbaijani security officials announced that they had foiled a plot to kill Israel’s ambassador in Baku and a number of Jewish figures in Azerbaijan. Tehran hit back with the accusation that Azerbaijan was playing host to intelligence officers from its enemy, Israel. 

Such recriminations reflect the recent history of mistrust between these two Shia Muslim-majority neighbours, but commentators are divided on why things should have got so much worse all of a sudden.

According to Ahmad Kazemi, head of the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB’s Baku bureau, aside from frictions of longer standing, the current causes of tension are “Azerbaijan’s cooperation with Israel against Iran, its participation in the embargo against Iran, and the problems it has artificially created for certain Iranian agencies. Missions of the Iranian humanitarian agency Emdad have been closed down in parts of Azerbaijan, and IRIB’s Baku correspondent Reza Rahimpur was deported in January without any explanation”.

Aliyar Safarli, who was Baku’s ambassador to Iran in 1994-98, takes a quite different view, arguing that relations have soured as Azerbaijan has emerged as a serious international player.

In the early days of independence, he said, “we were a small country unable to shape an independent policy vis-a-vis Iran. Things have changed now. Azerbaijan is now cooperating with the United States, Israel, Turkey and NATO, and it can direct its own policy.”

For Elkhan Shahinoghlu, head of the Atlas research centre in Baky, what worries Tehran most is the prospect of a cross-border “contagion” of pro-western ideas among its own population.

“The Iranian government thinks the ethnic Azerbaijanis on its territory might demand the implementation of secular values and modernisation,” he said.

Arif Yunus of the Institute for Peace and Democracy in Baku, suggested that there was an element of calculation in the official Azerbaijani stance. The government had been stung by western criticism of its human rights record, and was deliberately trying to show itself in a positive light compared with Iran.

“The government is using Iran to stress its own importance to the West. It knows that the West is not friendly with Iran and will support Azerbaijan,” he said. “Tensions have been raised deliberately so as to divert the West’s attention towards something it cares about.”

Shahla Sultanova is a freelance journalist in Azerbaijan.