Armenian-Iranian border, Agarak, Siunik Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2005

Via Registan, a story in the Jerusalem Post talks of a possible Azerbaijani role in any U.S. action against Iran. Although the idea sounds fantastic, there are those in Washington who believe that Iran’s large Azeri minority could play a part in any attempt to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

US officials stationed in Baku said that Azerbaijan, wedged in between Russia in the north and Iran in the south, could possibly use the 20 million Azeris who lived in northern Iran to convince the radical regime and its extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to back down from developing nuclear arms.

“The Azeris in Iran could possibly lead a coup and assist in overthrowing the current regime there,” one official told The Jerusalem Post. “They see that Azerbaijan life is improving and becoming more westernized while in Iran they are continuously suffering.”

[…]

The US military reportedly has listening stations along Azerbaijan’s border with Iran. According to other media reports, the US and Israel have considered using Azerbaijan as a launching pad for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactors.

According to the report, however, Azerbaijan’s President has given assurances to Iran’s Ambassador in Moscow that no attack would be launched from his country. As the article points out, it’s not as if the U.S. is stuck for potential launchpads.

US officials here said that if they wanted to attack Iran they could always use Iraq or Afghanistan where the army is already heavily stationed.

Nevertheless, this is not the first time that someone has suggested using Iran’s Azeri minority to push for change in the Islamic Republic, although three years ago, many were highly skeptical about such an idea.

At present, there is little tangible evidence to support the notion that Iranian Azeris are prepared to confront the government in Tehran. Iranian Azeris are widely known to be well-integrated into Iranian society and the state. Nevertheless, a new book by Brenda Shaffer, Harvard University’s Director of Caspian Studies, has reportedly captivated the attention of “regime change” advocates in Washington. In her book, “Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity,” Shaffer challenges the widely held view in contemporary Iranian scholarship that a broad Iranian identity supersedes ethnic identities.

Shaffer describes a cultural reawakening among Iranian Azeris, calls Iran’s national and ethnic-minority policy unjust and suggests that Iranian support for Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute stems from a fear of the Republic of Azerbaijan becoming strong and, as she said in a recent London lecture, emerging as “a source of attraction to [Iran’s] own Azerbaijanis.”

Washington policy-makers have also expressed an interest in the views of Iranian Azeri cultural rights activist and political dissident Mahmudali Chehregani, a former Tabriz University Professor who was jailed briefly three years ago in Iran, and who currently resides in the United States.

On April 9, he told an audience of policy-makers, diplomats, journalists and students at the Johns Hopkins University Central Asia-Caucasus Institute that a strong sense of Azerbaijani nationalism is growing in Iran, predicting the possibility of Azeri-led unrest unless the demands of this “movement” were met. He predicted “radical changes” in Iran within three to five years, hinting that those changes could emanate from unrest among Iran’s large Azeri population.

[…]

Chehregani backers in Turkey and in the Republic of Azerbaijan have hinted and said publicly that Iran’s Azeri community should unite with Azerbaijan, a view with virtually no support among Iranian Azeris, most on-the-ground observers agree.

Chehregani publicly disassociated himself with the unification idea in his Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Speech, instead arguing for more cultural rights for Azeris, and a future Iranian government with “a federal structure resembling the United States, where Azeris can have their own flag and parliament.”

[…]

While Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights, few Iranian Azeris display separatist tendencies, or go as far as Chehregani does in predicting ethnic-inspired unrest. Extensive reporting by this author in the three major Azerbaijani provinces of Iran, as well as among Iranian Azeris in Tehran, found that irredentist or unificationist sentiment was not widely held among Iranian Azeris. Few people framed their genuine political, social and economic frustration – feelings that are shared by the majority of Iranians – within an ethnic context.

[…]

The overwhelming majority of Iranian Azeris has displayed little interest in ethnic-inspired instability and virtually no interest in secession or unification with the Republic of Azerbaijan. Many view the Republic of Azerbaijan as economically stagnant and politically corrupt. As one Tabriz merchant joked: “We already virtually control Iran. Why would we want to become [Azerbaijani President Heidar] Aliyev’s slave?”

Ethnic Azerbaijani Iranian truckdrivers certainly seem quite relaxed when they enter Armenia to transport goods to Yerevan, and certainly don’t seem to display any interest in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh. That said, it is also true that many things are changing in both Moslem Republics and in recent years, the number of Iranians and Iranian-Armenians moving to Armenia has increased.

More interestingly, perhaps, those Iranians and Iranian-Armenians are expressing concern with the government in Tehran more and more so it is possible that some changes in attitude might be occuring among some ethnic Azeris in Iran. Regardless, an interesting idea with aspirations for a “Greater Azerbaijan” evident among some nationalist Azeris at least.

Incidently, two years ago I met Filip Noubel, then an analyst for the International Crisis Group (but now with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting), in Yerevan and got him to submit photos for a Hetq photostory on the Azeri minority living in Tabriz, Iran. You can view it online here.