{"id":1473742,"date":"2024-06-27T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1473742"},"modified":"2024-06-27T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T11:30:00","slug":"azerbaijan-israels-oil-for-arms-quiet-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/azerbaijan-israels-oil-for-arms-quiet-friend\/1473742\/","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan: Israel’s ‘Oil For Arms’ Quiet Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Azerbaijan: Israel’s ‘Oil For Arms’ Quiet Friend<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Via Middle East Eye<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

While many Muslim-majority states have\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u00a0for the conduct of its\u00a0war in Gaza<\/a>, Azerbaijan stands out for its relative quiet. Baku, which will soon attract more global attention as it prepares to host\u00a0Cop29<\/a>\u00a0in November, has long enjoyed closer ties to Israel than many of its near neighbors<\/strong>. In recent years, the friendship has blossomed further.<\/p>\n

Israel is now the top\u00a0destination<\/a>\u00a0for Azeri crude oil<\/strong>, while key\u00a0weaponry<\/a>\u00a0for Baku\u2019s victory in the 2020\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh war<\/a>\u00a0was supplied by Israel. But ties are driven by more than just material benefits, with shared geopolitical concerns, especially regarding\u00a0Iran<\/a>, further oiling the relationship.<\/p>\n

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Azerbaijan to meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on May 30, 2023. Anadolu Agency<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Israel calls Azerbaijan a “strategic partner<\/a>“, enjoying close historical ties. When Azerbaijan declared independence in 1991, Israel was one of the first states to recognise the new state. A small\u00a0Jewish community<\/a>\u00a0in Azerbaijan, of between 7,000 and 16,000 people, ensures a cultural connection<\/strong>, but the political relationship has been the priority.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Netanyahu became the first Israeli premier to visit Azerbaijan, in\u00a01997<\/a>, and since then trade and security cooperation has increased. By the mid-2000s, Azerbaijan had become Israel\u2019s\u00a0fifth-largest<\/a>\u00a0trading partner, with oil headed to the eastern Mediterranean and weaponry and other military material headed to the Caspian Sea.<\/p>\n

Today, Azerbaijan, alongside Kazakhstan, supplies\u00a060 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the crude oil Israel uses<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

No criticism of Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Israel believes that having a Muslim-majority state as a partner might reduce its diplomatic isolation in the Muslim world.\u00a0This has been particularly pronounced since the Gaza war began.<\/p>\n

While most Muslim-majority states have been vocal in their criticism, the government of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has been surprisingly quiet<\/strong>. Aliyev met Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of the\u00a0Munich Security Conference<\/a>\u00a0in February, and there has been no outpouring of public criticism of Israel since the Gaza war began.<\/p>\n

Baku-based journalist and analyst,\u00a0Rovshan Mammadli<\/a>, even reports a “de facto ban on protests against Israel”<\/strong> by Aliyev\u2019s authoritarian government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baku is not unconcerned with the suffering of the\u00a0Palestinians<\/a>. It recognizes Palestine and hosts a Palestinian embassy. It has been a vocal supporter of the two-state solution and, since the war broke out, supported UN resolutions calling for\u00a0ceasefires<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there has been a conscious balance to Baku\u2019s line: expressing sympathy for the Palestinians without excessively criticizing Israel.\u00a0For Baku, Gaza falls behind more proximate concerns, for which Israel has proven a useful ally.<\/p>\n

The first is the conflict with neighboring Armenia. Having provided Baku with key weaponry to defeat Armenia in the\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh<\/a>\u00a0war of 2020, Israel has deepened its military partnership with Azerbaijan since then. Intelligence sharing between the two states has increased, while Israel has provided modern\u00a0drone<\/a>\u00a0technology<\/strong>. Israeli companies have also rushed to invest in rebuilding Nagorno-Karabakh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s support in the 2020 war was tied to Azerbaijan\u2019s second proximate concern: its neighbor to the south, Iran.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Tehran backed Armenia in its decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan, despite it being a Christian-majority state fighting a fellow Muslim-majority state. This has contributed to frosty relations between Tehran and Baku and helps partly explain why Aliyev has been happy to forge ties with Iran\u2019s long-standing rival, Israel.<\/p>\n

The mutual hostility has even seen Iran backing\u00a0Islamist groups in Azerbaijan, and Baku to encourage Iranian Azeris to push for separatism,\u00a0without much success<\/a>. Rather like its quiet\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0for some Kurdish groups in\u00a0Iraq<\/a>, Israel sees the value of supporting strong anti-Tehran forces on Iran\u2019s border<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

‘New chapter’<\/strong><\/p>\n

That said, Armenia\u2019s defeats in 2020 and the collapse of Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 have changed\u00a0Tehran\u2019s calculus somewhat<\/a>. Immediately after the war, it\u00a0mobilized<\/a>\u00a0troops along the Caucasus border as a means to deter Azerbaijan from pushing deeper into Armenia to connect with its non-contiguous province, Nakhchivan.<\/p>\n

Since then, Tehran has adopted less aggressive methods: concluding an\u00a0agreement<\/a>\u00a0last year to allow Azerbaijan access to Nakhchivan through Iranian territory, to temper its ambitions of conquering Armenia\u2019s\u00a0“Zangezur Corridor”<\/a>.\u00a0 They have also endorsed the possibility of a new\u00a0rail link<\/a>\u00a0between Russia and India, via Iranian and Azeri territory, while officials have spoken of a “new chapter<\/a>”\u00a0in Baku-Tehran relations.<\/p>\n

This might not erase the decades of tensions between the two neighbors, nor prompt Baku to halt its ties to Israel. However, Tehran may hope that if Baku feels less threatened by Iran, it will ease its closeness to Israel over time.<\/p>\n

A more immediate source of strain on Israeli-Azeri ties, however, concerns\u00a0Turkey<\/a>. Far more than Israel, Turkey is Azerbaijan\u2019s closest ally<\/strong>. Aliyev\u2019s father and predecessor as president even described the relationship with their Turkic brethren as, \u201cone nation, two states<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Azerbaijan ordered the Sky Dew observational system from Israel. Sky Dew detects drones and missiles and was jointly developed by the US and Israel.<\/p>\n

AZ state media notes that use of the Sky Dew will reduce AZ’s monitoring costs. pic.twitter.com\/KYOPcXsC8r<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Lindsey Snell (@LindseySnell) March 13, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2020, Ankara provided key weaponry, though less than Israel, but also helped\u00a0train<\/a>\u00a0Azerbaijan\u2019s military and provided\u00a0Syrian militiamen<\/a>\u00a0to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh. In contrast to Aliyev, Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been vocally critical of Israel since the start of the Gaza conflict. Israel and Turkey have recalled their\u00a0diplomats<\/a>, while Erdogan has severed some\u00a0trade deals<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute hypothesizes that Erdogan\u2019s anger at Israel might ultimately “doom<\/a>”\u00a0Azerbaijani-Israeli ties, with the Turkish president demanding its ally respond more forcefully over Gaza<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

However, while this is a possibility given Ankara\u2019s importance to Baku, Israeli-Azeri ties are now deep and historical and Azerbaijan would be reluctant to give them up, even in the face of Turkish pressure. Baku will probably hope that a ceasefire is announced before any such pressure from Ankara emerges, allowing it to continue its close, quiet relationship with Israel under less scrutiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 06\/27\/2024 – 03:30<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/azerbaijan-israels-oil-arms-quiet-friend<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Azerbaijan: Israel’s ‘Oil For Arms’ Quiet Friend Via Middle East Eye While many Muslim-majority states have\u00a0condemned\u00a0Israel\u00a0for the conduct of its\u00a0war in Gaza, Azerbaijan stands out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1473743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1473742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}