DEBKAfile Special Report June 6, 2012,
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Baku, Azerbaijan Wednesday, June 6, to kick off a South Caucasian tour amid President Ilam Aliyav’s worsening relations with the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Baku’s pro-Western orientation and its fast-growing military and energy ties with Israel are thorns in both their sides.
But for Washington, Azerbaijan is an expanding strategic asset: Since Pakistan closed its overland route for supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the US is increasingly reliant on Azerbaijan’s airfields. Its logistical value will rise with the advance of the 2014 date for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Clinton will have another go, after several failures, at resolving the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over which Russia and Iran side with Armenia against Azerbaijan. The day she landed in Baku, Armenian forces killed five Azerbaijani soldiers in a border clash.
Washington has never admitted its direct involvement in the bilateral ties unfolding between Baku and Jerusalem but its generally understand that those ties act as a thin wedge through America’s door to the region. It is significant that the party welcoming the US secretary in the Azerbaijan capital includes Richard L. Morningstar, whom President Barack Obama picked in May as ambassador to the small oil republic. He is still awaiting congressional endorsement.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that Morningstar is the architect of the Obama administration’s oil and gas policy in Central Asia opposite Russia and Iran, as well as the linchpin of US energy policy in the Middle East. He was present at all the negotiations leading up to the contracts signed by Israel, Greece and Cyprus for the distribution of offshore Mediterranean gas and oil beds. His presence bespoke the administration’s support for the investment in their exploitation by American oil interests.
It may be presumed that Morningstar was in on the newly-signed $1.6 billion contract for the sale of Israeli arms to Azerbaijan – although Washington is unlikely to confirm this.
Moscow and Tehran are particularly put out by this deal in the regional context, concerned that it will enhance Azerbaijan’s military clout in the Caucasian and the Caspian Sea. With a well-equipped militlary, he will be a lot freer to pursue an independent energy policy and less vulnerable to pressures from Tehran and Moscow.
Regarding the second side of the relatationship, towards the end of 2011, the Azerbaijan state-owned Caspian Drilling Company quietly signed a contract for the acquisition of a 5 percent share in the firm controlling the Israeli Med Ashdod, which is developing an offshore field estimated to hold 280 million barrels of oil. This was the first Azeri investment in a foreign energy project.
Soon after the signing, in November 2011, a secret meeting took place in London between representatives of the Russian energy colossus Gazprom and Israel to discuss a Russian bid to acquire a stake in Med Ashdod.
Moscow also put out secret feelers for stakes in additional Israeli gas and oil Mediterranean projects. One offer was for the Russians to provide and finance pumping facilities and pipelines for the Israeli fields and take charge of marketing to Europe. Vladimir Putin, while running for president, quietly lobbied top Israeli officials to gain their support for Moscow’s partnership proposition.
In the last week of April this year, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman spent two days in Baku. The talks he held there with Azeri leaders were veiled in secrecy, but sources in Baku said they were concerned with the highly important laying down of guidelines for the rapidly-evolving security and energy ties between the two countries.
In 2011, Israel purchased one-third of its oil consumption from Azerbaijan – 2.5 million tons worth $2 billion dollars, and the volume of trade between them rose to $4 billion, making that Caspian country Israel’s biggest trading partner in the former Soviet bloc.
The military and intelligence ties between Baku and Jerusalem have been consistently kept under wraps, but while Moscow and Tehran knew about them, they never expected them to expand to their present magnitude.
The deal today holds Azerbaijan’s investments in Israel’s burgeoning energy industry contingent on the scale of its arms purchases. Both elements of this trade-off are earmarked for massive growth.
According to European energy sources, Azerbaijan’s aspirations go beyond investment in developing Israel’s Mediterranean gas and oil fields and extend to bidding for a role with American energy firms in laying the pipelines planned to carry the oil to European outlets. This would make Baku a rival for Putin’s ambitions to carve out a place in the new markets for Gazprom.
In the view of some Western military experts, the interface between the Azerbaijani and Israeli energy and military spheres offers Jerusalem a strategic pathway to the Caspian region under Iran’s nose, as well a lucrative source of revenue for its arms industry for years go come.
@ Laura:
It’s Dyan giving the keys to the Temple Mount the moment it “is in our hands” to the Wakft. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I’ve been zapped again. TED, YOU’RE WORKING OVERTIME AGAINST ME.
@ Jonathan:
Thanks for saying so, Jonathan. Obama is such a foreign policy airhead, he would be better off just turning over our national defense to a bunch of teenage war-gamers. Anyone who can read a map, knows that Iran has to be taken out — and also, as you say, that we should get the heck out of Afghanistan. The two events can be a marriage made in heaven, IF WE WOULD ONLY GET SOMEONE WITH HALF A BRAIN ABOUT DEFENSE IN THE WHITE HOUSE. How about Adam West? I know, I’m dreaming…
Laura Said:
Israel can always buy oil from the USA, and remain powerful.
I also wondered about this. This off-shore oil can make Israel very powerful.
@ BlandOatmeal:
I agree with your assessment of the situation. Obama is a rookie politician who really only knows Chicago. He hates Israel and her leader, and has no in depth understanding of the international scene at all. His attitude to please all Muslims everywhere is naive to the maximum. Iran needs to be attacked and the sooner the better. Failure to do so will have dire consequences in the region and in the entire world. And why is the USA in Afghanistan, anyway? It certainly is not there to preserve democracy.
I am also dismayed that the Israeli government is inviting everyone, from the USA to the Russians, to have an opportunity to invest in off-shore oil which belongs to Israel. This money ought to go to the Israeli economy and provide her energy independence as well as financial acumen. Instead there will be a trickle-down effect at best. Crooks are selling out the Jewish people.
I’m pleasantly surprized. 🙂
This demonstrates the bankruptcy of Obama’s foreign policy. The US has literally painted itself into a corner in Afghanistan. Please refer to a map, if you don’t know what I’m talking about:
1. To Afghanistan’s west is Iran — a thorn in everyone’s side, including all the Persian Gulf oil suppliers but also Israel’s — as well as being the main fueler of terror and despotism in the Levant (Syria, Israel, Lebanon & Jordan). Obama chooses to pussyfoot them and keep them as a strategic blocker against US forces in Afghanistan.
2. To Afgh’s south and east is Pakistan, which Obama has soured relationships with to the point that we can no longer transit Pakistan to supply our troops, not to mention to evacuate them from Afgh. on schedule in an orderly fashion.
3. To Afgh’s NW is Turkmenistan, a solidly neutral country which will allow transit of neither US, NATO, Iranian nor Russian troops. Think of them as an impassable mountain: They are out of the picture.
4. To Afgh’s NE is China. During his pathetic 3 years in office, Obama has caused US-China relations to go on the skids. Frankly, I think the Republicans would do worse in this regard, but BO has done badly enough.
5. To Afgh’s north are Taijikistan and Uzbekistan. This is our only remaining way of escape from and supply to Afgh. Under Obama, our relationships with those countries have been on a downhill course, while the Russians and Iranians have gained in inlfuence. Besides the Afghanistan issue, Uzbekistan and next-door neighbor Kazakhstan are major energy producers. They are dependent on the Russians right now, to get their products to market — because Obama has stupidly cut them off from access to the south, through Iran and Pakistan.
A look on the map shows the obvious solution to these problems: ATTACK IRAN, and open it up to supply and evacuation routes, as well as to a trade outlet for the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzskaya, Taijikistan and Turkmenistan. At the same time, knock out the main prop of both Assad and Hizbullah, and the biggest danger to Iraq, the Persian Gulf states and Israel.
US General DENSEy, Obama’s lackey, says we can’t do it because we’re too weak and overstretched. That’s complete election year BS, and Romney ought to be calling Obama on the matter. Instead, he’s been soft-shoeing around political correctness and running a campaign of cliches.
What are the problems involved? The chief ones are,
A. If BO attacked Iran, he would win the election hands-down — providing he and Densey don’t totally flub the deal in a matter of weeks and months. I give them more credit than this. Unfortunately, I don’t think BO’s problem is in the ability department, as much as it is in the ideological one: He thinks the way to peace and election victory is to be nice, and turn the Middle East into a Muslim Brotherhood Utopia. If he does move against Iran, he is likely to shoot himself in the foot, bending over to please his Muslim buddies.
B. If BO attacks and flubs, which only a Democrat seems capable of doing, the foreign policy backlash would be catastrophic, with the US losing its leadership and the region descending into chaos. One sure way to bring about this chaos, would be to treat Iran as a side issue, while nipping at her heels in Syria. This seems to be the direction that Obama, the Russians, the press, the Liberal Jews and the Republicans all want to go, with or without an eventual action against Iran. Maybe chaos is exactly what BO wants — it would be a wonderful present for his buddies in the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.
I will be pleasantly surprized, if the spam-thing doesn’t eat this up.