Azerbaijan’s Regional Role Iran and Beyond By Richard Weitz September 2013 Azerbaijan’s Regional Role • • • Azerbaijan’s Regional Role Iran and Beyond TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... 2 AZERBAIJAN’S GROWING GLOBAL INFLUENCE ..................................................................................... 5 EMPOWERING RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE .................................................................................................. 11 MANAGING IRAN'S REGIONAL AMBITIONS ......................................................................................... 20 IRAN'S AZERBAIJANI MINORITY ......................................................................................................................... 21 CURRENT TENSIONS ............................................................................................................................................ 23 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................... 33 Executive Summary 1 Azerbaijan’s Regional Role • • • Executive Summary The Republic of Azerbaijan, a close U.S. ally since Azerbaijanis regained their independence following the Soviet Union’s collapse, has become a prominent role model for Muslim-majority nations seeking to manage religious and ethnic differences in a harmonious and productive manner. Thanks to its secular policies and embracing approach toward religious an ethnic diversity, Azerbaijanis have accrued substantial soft power as an attractive Muslim model for emulation by other countries. By enhancinG this soft power, the United States can challenGe Iran’s influence amonG Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere, where Azerbaijan is already viewed more favorably than Iran. In particular, Azerbaijan can serve as a model for Iran’s large and influential Azerbaijani minority, which could indirectly change Tehran’s obnoxious foreign and defense policies without the risky use of U.S. military power. The first part of this report reviews Azerbaijan’s recent history and its growing soft power and other forms of influence. Thanks to its natural blessings—above all its people, geography, and energy resources—Azerbaijan has achieved remarkable economic, diplomatic, and soft power influence. Vision and perseverance also helped Azerbaijanis overcome their post-Soviet trauma and treacherous neighborhood to emerge as an influential force for religious, economic, and other forms of cooperation in an often-troubled world. During the two decades since Azerbaijanis regained their national independence on October18, 1991, its diverse people have experienced a remarkable comeback. The country’s GDP has grown from $1.2 billion in 1992 to more than $60 billion today. Azerbaijan is presently one of the few countries to serve on the UN Security Council, having won election in October 2011 to that seat for the first time in one of the Council’s most competitive elections in recent history. Azerbaijan gained this coveted status based on its contribution to reducing global tensions as well as on the basis of its energy riches. The report’s second part discusses the role of religion in Azerbaijani society and politics. The country adheres to a strict separation of Church and State. The government offers benign but hands-off support for all religious groups in the country, empowering all denominations to run their own institutions through mosques, churches, synagogues, etc., and other independent hierarchies. Azerbaijani officials follow the physician’s principle of “do no harm” toward religious groups and try to create favorable conditions for the freedom of worship—such as by declaring November 16 as an official Day of Tolerance--and strive to conserve the country’s different religions, cultures and traditions.1 Executive Summary 2 Azerbaijan’s Regional Role • • • The government also pursues an active policy of conserving the country’s diverse religious heritage, among other means by restoring houses of worship and other religious facilities, both in the country and beyond.2 In practice, Azerbaijanis strive to go beyond mere tolerance (refraining from discrimination or anti-religious acts) to embrace interfaith mutual respect, understanding, and collaboration.3 Figure 1 The President of Azerbaijan works the challenGe of expandinG his country’s reGional influence. Credit Photo: BiGstock They celebrate their country’s rich ethnic and religious diversity, taking pride in the dozens of religious groups that have been living in harmony on their lands for centuries, learning how to get along despite the invariable difficulties in managing religious differences, which normally involve fundamental human principles and values. The third section of the report reviews Azerbaijan’s complex relationship with Iran, which extends beyond their common religious heritage to encompass economic ties as well as geopolitical rivalry. Azerbaijan shares extensive historical and cultural ties with Iran as well as a 620-kilometer land frontier along with a Caspian Sea border. Although Azerbaijanis desire to maintain correct and proper relations with Tehran, Iran’s leaders have regularly denounced Azerbaijan’s secular policies and occasionally sought to destabilize Azerbaijan’s government through terrorism and other provocations. A mixture of offensive and defensive considerations motivates Iranian leaders. For some Iranians, as a neighboring country with a Shiite majority population and a history of ties with Persia, Azerbaijan is a natural target for exporting the Iranian Revolution as manifested in the Islamic Republic’s clerical system of government.4 For others, Azerbaijan’s soft power, secular government, Western orientation, and independent energy, economic, and security policies have reinforced Tehran’s hostility. Executive Summary 3 Azerbaijan’s Regional Role • • • Iran’s aggressive clerical regime considers Azerbaijan as falling within its zone of influence and has taken actions to reinforce that message. Over the past few years, Azerbaijan’s security services have foiled a number of alleged Iranian plots to carry out terrorist attacks against Western and Israeli interests in Azerbaijan. Despite Iran's official denial of any involvement, many believe that Tehran’s clerical regime is complicit in aiding the attacks against Western and Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and elsewhere in the world as a means to intimidate Azerbaijan against supporting Western military actions against Iran, an unfounded concern of some Iranians reinforced by irresponsible Western news commentaries. Perhaps even more importantly, as explained in detail below, the close cultural and ethnic ties between Azerbaijan and Iran have alarmed Iranian leaders into fearing that their own people, especially Iran’s ethnic Azerbaijani minority, would prefer their government adopt the kind of moderate domestic and foreign policies found in independent Azerbaijan.5 Iran is home to a large ethnic Azerbaijani population of around 30 million people. Like Iran’s other minorities, the country’s Azerbaijani have suffered from various forms of state-supported discrimination, especially in the public sphere. Azerbaijan’s independence has rekindled Iranian fears about potential Azerbaijani autonomous movements in Iran. 6 The report then assesses the partnership Azerbaijan enjoys with the United States and Israel. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Azerbaijan was among the first countries to offer the United States unconditional support in the war against terrorism. Its leaders denounced the al-Qaeda crimes and have permitted U.S. warplanes to overfly Azerbaijani territory in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, which drove the Afghan Taliban from power. Since then, Azerbaijan has provided landing and refueling support for U.S. military transports to Afghanistan and allowed NATO countries to deliver material to their troops in Afghanistan through the Northern Distribution Network that passes through Azerbaijan’s territory. In addition, Azerbaijan contributes to U.S. energy and economic goals. By exporting enormous amounts of natural gas from its own production as well as serving as a vital land corridor for Caspian and Central Asian energy deliveries to European countries, Azerbaijan reduces Europeans’ dependence on Russian and Iranian energy sources and helps thwart Iranian threats to global energy supplies by closing the Strait of hormuz or curtailing its own oil exports. Furthermore, U.S. firms have a major presence in Azerbaijan thanks to the government’s preferential treatment of U.S. energy companies, which began in the 1990s. Its diplomats have since used their country’s membership on the UN Security Council and other mechanisms to support U.S. regional and global security goals. Executive Summary 4 Azerbaijan’s Regional Role • • • Azerbaijan’s Growing Global Influence Although Azerbaijan has a population of less than ten million people who recently freed themselves from the dysfunctional Soviet economic system, the oil and natural gas deposits found along Azerbaijan’s section of the Caspian Sea have helped propel the country’s global influence. This energy revenue constitutes a significant portion of Azerbaijan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Azerbaijan became a major oil-producing region more than a century ago. After independence, 1990s, Azerbaijan signed multibillion-dollar