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| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 |
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ABSTRACT
Iran and Azerbaijan: A Contested Neighborhood
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| Emil Souleimanov and Ondrej Ditrych |
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Dr. Souleimanov, assistant professor at the Institue of Political Science at Charles University and at the University of Public Administration and International Relations in Prague, is a Fulbright visiting scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is author of An Endless War: The Russian-Chechen Conflict in Perspective (Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2006). Ondrej Ditrych is a research fellow at Prague’s Institute of International Relations and a Ph.D. candidate at the Institue of Political Science, Charles University.
After the fall of the USSR in 1991, there appeared a new player in the South Caucasus whose role in this region used to be of great importance. Iran, once forced to retreat as a consequence of the Russian army’s march to the south, has after more than 160 years received an opportunity to conduct an autonomous policy in the region again and attempt — if the geopolitical constellation permits — to realize its ancient strategic aims. Whether Iran will be successful in its attempt to restore its former influence in the South Caucasus will depend on Azerbaijan and — to a greater extent than conventionally assumed — on oil production and transportation issues. It is therefore suggested that Iranian-Azerbaijani relations have been crucial in the formation of the Islamic Republic’s foreign-policy agenda in the region and will remain so in the future.
Another variable to be taken into account is the wider international context in which Iran finds itself today, particularly in terms of its relationship with the great powers of Russia, China and the West. Iran’s policy may from this perspective be seen as a piece in the mosaic of a Eurasian “grand strategy” of local powers to limit the U.S. presence in the wider region of Central Eurasia. This article is an attempt to analyse Tehran’s complex policies vis-à-vis its northwestern neighbor, focusing on the context of interstate relations. |
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