Fake News Alert: Iran Isn’t Plotting To Strike Azerbaijan

Iran knows that NATO-member Turkiye is Azerbaijan’s mutual defense ally so a wider war could easily follow if Iran strikes Azerbaijan out of the misguided desire to de-escalate tensions with Israel.

The Telegraph’s scandalous report on Friday alleging that “Iran’s new president battles revolutionary guard to stop all-out war with Israel” set tongues wagging after it claimed that newly inaugured President Mahmoud Pezeshkian proposed an Iranian strike against Azerbaijan. The pretext would be that it’s supposedly hosting “secret Israeli bases” that might have played a role in last month’s assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

According to the report, this course of action could de-escalate regional tensions while also allowing Iran to still “save face” after what happened in its capital right after Pezeshkian’s inauguration less than two weeks ago. Another possibility is carrying out a strike against such supposed bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Attacking Israel directly yet again so soon after April’s retaliatory strikes, which a Russian parliamentarian described at the time as a “beautiful theatrical production”, could risk sparking a larger war.

That rationale is sound, albeit controversial from the perspective of many Resistance Axis members who believe that failing to teach Israel a lesson will only embolden it to be even more aggressive, but the obvious problem is that there’s never been any proof that “secret Israeli bases” exist in Azerbaijan. There have certainly been reports about them in the past, which were wildly amplified by the Alt-Media Community, but that’s all that they ever were: reports based on unnamed sources and speculation.

Many people believed them though since they conformed with their expectations. A lot of Resistance Axis members hate Azerbaijan’s close ties with Israel, which include Azerbaijani energy sales to Israel and Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan, and some even refuse to recognize it as a country since they still consider it to be an historical part of Iran that was illegitimately taken from it by Russia. It’s not just average folks who think this, but also some members of Iran’s “principalist” (“hardline”) faction.

These figures occasionally stir the pot by encourage friendly media outlets to circulate these reports in order to manipulate their target audience’s perceptions and put pressure on the state to distance itself from Azerbaijan “for principle’s sake”. Their efforts are aided by Armenia, which also hates Azerbaijan and wants to drive a wedge between it and Iran, just like the West does as well since it fears that a meaningful Azerbaijani-Iranian rapprochement would accelerate regional multipolar processes.

The aforesaid observation isn’t to imply that “principalists” are colluding with the West, but just to highlight their independent convergence of interests in this respect, each in advance of a polar opposite worldview. This is relevant to keep in mind when considering what the publicly financed Azerbaijani Press Agency reported about The Telegraph’s scandalous story citing unnamed official sources. According to them:

“Some circles have begun to worry about the recent normalization of relations between Iran and Azerbaijan and want to disrupt this process. Possibly, given that Iran's new president is particularly of Azerbaijani origin and has a warm attitude towards Azerbaijan, there are forces both inside and outside of Iran that wish to undermine these relations. It would be best for Iranian side to comment on these claims and refute them, putting an end to the doubts.”

These are solid points, especially the one about Pezeshkian’s ethnic origins. Although Azeris played leading roles in the Islamic Revolution and post-1979 Iran, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei being a perfect example of this, some “principalists” already distrust Pezeshkian due to his reputation as a rival “reformist” (“moderate”). Add to it his ethnic origins, and it’s easy to see why some might be very suspicious of him, even up to the point of suspecting that he’s a so-called “Manchurian candidate”.

Accordingly, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of them thus wanted to subvert his foreign policy “for the greater good” exactly as Trump’s opponents subverted his for the same reason after alleging that he was a “Russian puppet”, thus adding context to The Telegraph’s report. That could explain why the source who told them about his plot to strike Azerbaijan was allegedly “a second aide to Pezeshkian”, though it might also be that no such aide spoke to them, with it instead being another Iranian or a foreigner.

If it really was one of his aides, then that raises the question of why they didn’t demand that The Telegraph hide their professional role in order to avoid being found out. It might be that they secretly sympathize with the “principalists” and wanted to make a media spectacle out of the perception that Pezeshkian’s aides smeared their rivals while speaking to adversarial Western media. This could serve to discredit the “reformists” and put more pressure on them to fall into line with the “principalists”.

As for the possibility of it being another Iranian that wasn’t one of his aides, they could possibly be a “principalist” masquerading as a “reformist” for that reason, while the third theory of a foreigner being behind this for divide-and-rule ends also can’t be ruled out. All that’s known is that the alleged aide said that “[Pezeshkian] has suggested targeting somewhere related to Israel in the Republic of Azerbaijan or [Iraqi] Kurdistan and let these countries know before that and get done with the whole drama.”

The wording of that statement is deliberately provocative too since it suggests that Azerbaijan would allow itself to be bombed, with the innuendo being that it also wouldn’t retaliate, ergo the expectation of “[being] done with the whole drama.” Azerbaijan isn’t Iraqi Kurdistan though. It has a modern army that’s proven its effectiveness and won’t let anyone attack it with impunity. If it was hit, then it would hit back just as hard, if not harder, thus catalyzing the escalation cycle that Iran supposedly wants to avoid.

Iran also knows that NATO-member Turkiye is Azerbaijan’s mutual defense ally so a wider war could easily follow if Iran strikes Azerbaijan out of the misguided desire to de-escalate tensions with Israel. Accordingly, there’s no reason to believe that Iran is considering this due to how counterproductive it would be, with it therefore likely being the case that at least this part of The Telegraph’s report is fake news. Folks can debate who’s behind it and why, but there’s no reason to take it seriously.