Iran, Exporting Revolution to Azerbaijan
Filed under: Iran ~ Russia
We've previously discussed the threats to Western security posed by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's support for radical Islamic maniac Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now, let's have a look at the consequences for Russia itself.
The signal hallmark of the USSR, as much as communism or repression, was always self-destruction, and it appears that adopting a proud KGB spy as its ruler has allowed Russia to retain that hallmark intact. Scholar-blogger Paul Goble tells us that Azerbaijani prosecutors have
brought to trial 16 members of an underground group the authorities there identify as the "Northern Mahdi Army" and say was organized, trained and supplied by Iran's Republican Guard in order to overthrow the current Azerbaijani government and impose an Islamic state on the Iranian model there. The trial, which began [Monday] in closed session some ten months after Azerbaijani police arrested the group, throws into sharp relief the growing tensions just beneath the surface of what both Baku and Tehran have generally sought to portray as good-neighborly relations. According to the prosecution, Russian and Azerbaijani media report, the members of this group underwent "special training in Iran [under the direction of that country's Republican Guard, a group the United States and other countries have identified as a terrorist organization] in the use of various forms of arms and explosive devices." The notion that Iran would try to "export its revolution" to Azerbaijan, the only other country with a Shiite majority, has long been common ground in discussions about Azerbaijan, but the suggestion that Iran has set up "an underground army" to overthrow the government there has raised a variety of concerns there and elsewhere.
Goble notes that "Azerbaijanis are thought to form roughly a third of the Iranian population overall -- some 30 million people -- and to constitute a slightly greater share of the residents of the Iranian capital, Tehran" and provides a wealth of background information on the region.
Let's leave aside Russia's ridiculous proposal to reposition the U.S. European missile defense system in Azerbaijan, which was absurd for strategic reasons long before this issue is considered, an obvious effort by Russia to subvert Western security (relying on the Soviet idea that the West is composed of idiots clever Russians can easily dupe). Let's instead ask this: If Iran is seeking to export revolution to Azerbaijan today, how long before it targets contiguous, Slavic-Orthodox Russia? Goble reports that Russia's large Muslim population is becoming increasingly active, with the number applying to make the Haj pilgrimage doubling this year compared to last, and that the Kremlin is seeking to use its Chechen proxy Ramzan Kadyrov as a wedge against the rise of domestic Islam. Some Russian Orthodox leaders are referring to intermarriage as a form of genocide, and Goble has noted the possibility that Russia could be majority-Muslim by 2050.
By seeking to insert a U.S. military presence in Azerbaijan, was Russia trying to get the U.S. to do its fighting for it? And how can Russia's active support for Iran, including nuclear technology, missile systems to defend it (even while opposing such systems in Eastern Europe as destabilizing) and endless diplomatic cover, blocking sanctions in the UN over the entire world's objections, constitute anything other than a fundamentally suicidal policy for Russia? Is Russia really willing to create, and be destroyed by, a Frankenstein monster in Iran just so it can spit in the eye of the West? One might find that hard to believe if there were not the recent history of the USSR as a reference point.
Click the jump for a map of the region.
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