Iran, Turkey, and the future of the South Caucasus

Since late September 2021, when Iran-Azerbaijan relations hit a low level, Tehran and Baku have engaged in a means of de-escalation. A lot of the main focus is on increasing financial cooperation and advancing plans to determine pan-regional transportation hyperlinks, such because the North-South railroad hall connecting India to Russia by way of Iran and Azerbaijan.  

Such efforts ought to be welcomed and inspired as enhancing the collective financial well-being of the South Caucasus area is to the advantage of all regional states. That stated, underlying geopolitical tensions are nonetheless an element and might derail makes an attempt at financial integration at any second. On this context, the Iranian-Turkish competitors for affect within the South Caucasus is essentially the most urgent challenge that must be managed. 

Iran’s Turkey fears

From Tehran’s perspective, Azerbaijan’s victory within the 2020 battle in opposition to Armenia couldn’t have been achieved with out Turkish and Israeli assist and a Russian incapacity to stop Armenia’s defeat. On this Iranian studying, Baku has been emboldened and views “its military-diplomatic technique [as] vindicated.” This consists of its determination to pick out Turkey and Israel as its major international companions. 

From Tehran’s perspective, this sense of coverage vindication in Baku presents its personal challenges. Israel is, in spite of everything, Iran’s prime regional rival. Because the mid-Nineties the Iranians have needed to interact in a fragile balancing act to not let the shut military-security cooperation between Baku and Jerusalem scuttle Tehran’s choice to keep up cordial relations with Azerbaijan. 

It’s, nonetheless, Iranian considerations about Turkish plans to increase its affect in Azerbaijan and the broader South Caucasus that would spark recent tensions and result in a brand new chapter within the area’s historical past. Briefly, Tehran fears that Ankara’s technique to cement relations with Baku is a coverage that rests closely on a pan-Turkic message that goals to capitalize on the shared language, historical past, and tradition of Turkic audio system that reside throughout an unlimited area from Turkey throughout northern Iran to the Caucasus and Central Asia and all the best way to China.

It’s precisely pan-Turkism that the Iranians are most anxious about. In the meantime, Russia, which has its personal important Turkic minorities and shares Iran’s fears about pan-Turkism, has a weakened hand within the area because of its invasion of Ukraine and the opposed ramifications this has had on Moscow’s capacity to proceed to play its historic position as a powerbroker within the South Caucasus.

There are not any official information however round 20% of Iran’s inhabitants of 85 million individuals are ethnic Azerbaijanis. It is a group that’s deeply built-in within the material of the Iranian nation, and there’s no signal of large-scale secessionist tendencies. Nonetheless, officers and analysts in Tehran stay massively delicate to this challenge, and significantly any Turkish aspirations to incite Iran’s Azerbaijanis in any upsurge in Iranian-Turkish tensions.  

Alongside this line of pondering, the argument typically heard from Iranian officers is that the Turkish-Azerbaijani understanding to make the most of the pan-Turkic card in opposition to Iran is wholeheartedly supported by Israel. Tehran’s cost in opposition to Baku is that it offers “secure havens” to ethnic Azerbaijani secessionists from Iran, an accusation that President Ilham Aliyev has roundly rejected. In any occasion, with Russia consumed by its battle in Ukraine, some in Tehran count on that Ankara and Baku will increase their assist for pan-Turkism, and this may invariably put them on a collision course with Tehran.  

Iran, Turkey, and the transit race

This Iranian-Turkish competitors within the South Caucasus additionally has financial dimensions. Iranian officers have lengthy maintained that the nation’s central location permits it to function a land bridge for transit routes connecting West Asia to each Europe and East Asia. It is a actuality nobody can deny if one seems on the map. What may not be denied is that the U.S. and Israel have opposed and proceed to oppose Iran’s involvement in pan-regional tasks that may profit it economically.  

In return, Tehran has achieved subsequent to nothing to search for methods to scale back such opposition since doing so would require reorienting its total international coverage and lowering tensions with the U.S. and Israel. As an alternative, Tehran’s focus has been on international locations, akin to Turkey, that look to learn from Iran’s incapacity to perform as a regional hub for commerce and transit.

Whereas the Iranians acknowledge their shortcomings, they’ve been sluggish to behave to rectify the scenario. This lack of momentum is one thing that Tehran ought to already be regretting when one seems on the velocity with which Turkey is shifting forward to make itself the regional transit hub for the entire of West Asia, together with the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Accordingly, Turkey’s latest efforts, together with the revealing of plans to hyperlink up with Central Asia by way of the Caspian Sea, are seen as a direct problem to Iranian pursuits. 

Take for instance Turkey’s “Trans-Caspian East-West-Center Hall Initiative,” which Ankara additionally refers to as “The Center Hall.” This hyperlinks Turkey to the Caucasus by way of Georgia and Azerbaijan after which by way of a sea hyperlink crosses the Caspian Sea to Central Asia and China. Turkish advertising calls this a “revival” of the Silk Street, which is a falsehood because the historic Silk Street travelled via what’s now Iran. 

A sub-component of such Turkish efforts is the “Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan-Afghanistan Transit Hall Settlement,” also referred to as the “Lapis Lazuli Settlement.” Once more, the web loser within the improvement of a route connecting Central Asia and Afghanistan to the Black and Mediterranean seas is Iran, which can see itself locked out of a presumably vital regional transit community. It would additionally put Iran’s commerce ties with Afghanistan and the Central Asian states in danger since extra commerce flows will imply extra competitors for a similar export markets that Tehran presently relies on. 

Regardless of such realities, Iran continues to be sluggish in appearing. In Tehran, the related forms in relation to regional commerce and transit coverage must be overhauled and simplified. In a single case in October 2021, when two Pakistani vans with items transited via Iran to Turkey, they confronted appreciable bureaucratic delays on the border — delays that had been solely resolved after mediation by senior customs officers in Tehran. The incident revealed a damaged system that’s not engaging to worldwide commerce on a big scale. Iran additionally must signal bilateral and multilateral transit agreements with neighbors and past for it to turn into a major transit route.

Choices forward

Briefly, Iran and Turkey are presently engaged in a delicate however deeper competitors for affect within the South Caucasus, together with within the realm of doable new transit tasks. The Iranians know that the removing of sanctions is vital to their capacity to turn into a regional transit hub. It is a supply of revenue that Iran would welcome. The income from every ton of products transiting via Iran is reportedly the identical as that from every barrel of oil exported. 

However Tehran’s predicament is bigger than an incapacity to show its geography right into a supply of revenue by turning into a transit hub. Regardless of latest efforts by Baku and Tehran to give attention to mutually advantageous financial cooperation when doable, there’s a want for broader political dialogue. Above all, Iran must do extra to tout the constructive position it may well play as a mediator between Azerbaijan and Armenia. 

There is no such thing as a doubt that Tehran was blindsided by the 44-day battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late 2020 over management of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Iranians had been equally shocked by the extent of the involvement of Turkey and Israel in the course of the combating and within the aftermath of the cease-fire that was brokered by Moscow however the place Ankara was — not like Tehran — a celebration to the negotiations. 

As Iran’s former Overseas Minister Javad Zarif put it in January 2021, Tehran’s intention is to search for totally different means by which regional international locations can “work collectively to assist the Nagorno-Karabakh disaster [to come to an end] and [improve] the scenario of peace and stability.” That is what the Iranians and the Turks have known as the “six-party union” amongst Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Solely time will inform if Iran can get well any misplaced floor within the South Caucasus, however there isn’t a query in Tehran right now that Iran has been too neglectful of the importance of the area for its geostrategic and financial pursuits.

Alex Vatanka is the director of MEI’s Iran Program and a senior fellow with the Frontier Europe Initiative. His most up-to-date ebook is The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The USA, Overseas Coverage and Political Rivalry Since 1979. You may observe him on Twitter @AlexVatanka. The views expressed on this piece are his personal.

Picture by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Company by way of Getty Photographs