Alwaght- Political, security, and economic partnership of Azerbaijan and Iraq's Kurdistan region has taken a growing trend in the past few years. This is an issue of significance with respect to Iranian national interests as it has gone beyond simple bilateral relations and can involve a range of geopolitical issues in regional competition and even bring security challenges to the region's stability.
In a rare visit, President of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Nechervan Barzani traveled along with a delegation of high-ranking regional officials to Azerbaijan last week. He discussed with Azerbaijani officials speeding up boost of Erbil-Baku ties and in the first step agreed to open Azerbaijan consulate in Erbil.
Barzani’s visit comes as in February and during Munich Security Conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met the autonomous region’s president and invited him to visit Baku.
The Baku-Erbil relationship progress hardly fits within the sovereignty framework of Iraq and does not match the extent of their relations. Despite the fact that foreign policy lines are within the powers of the central government, the KRG in recent months and especially after walkout of representatives of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has put aside reservations and embarked on a trend inconsonant to the principles of foreign policy of administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Bilateral economic ambitions
Economically, Baku-Erbil zeal for expansion of economic relations in addition to bilateral benefits derives from geoeconomic ambitions, with access to the sea transit routes and breaking the geographical barriers being at the center of these ambitions. Despite the fact that Azerbaijan and Iraq share no borders, they have several potentials capable of contributing to boosting their foreign trade. Over the past few years, Iraq's Kurdistan region has been facing substantial economic crisis as the foreign debts, oil pre-sales, and failure of talks with Baghdad over Erbil's share from federal budget have severely strained its income sources, and now it is eyeing producing gas and exporting it for revenues. Erbil leaders are optimistic to send their gas to Europe via Azerbaijan’s Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline Project (TANAP). This is a project Baku is interested in and even its foreign ministry in 2014 invited Baghdad to join it.
TANAP is a 1,850-kilometer pipeline that stretches from Erdahan province in eastern Turkey to Edirne province in western Turkey. It is connected to the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), which brings natural gas produced in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz-2 field in the Caspian Sea to the border of Georgia and Turkey. It forms a key part of the Southern Gas Corridor for the transfer of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. The gas will then reach Europe by connecting to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). The construction of this $7 billion project started in March 2015.
Also, Azerbaijan is certainly hopeful to reach Persian Gulf market and warm waters of the ocean through Iraq’s Basra.
Though Azerbaijan is already a part of the big North-South Corridor project through Iran, rising cleavages with Tehran over regional issues, especially the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, has caused Baku to look for an alternative route to reduce dependence on Iran's route, and it considers Iraq as the best option. This issue has drawn the attention of Baku authorities even further, especially considering Tehran's opposition to the construction of the Azerbaijani-eyed Zangezor Corridor, which changes the historical borders of the region and endangers regional stability. In fact, Baku hopes that after the opening of the Zangzor Corridor, the process of turning Iraq into a transit bridge will accelerate.
Also, Azerbaijan has in the back of its mind a hope to get a share from Kurdistan’s market.
To prepare the ground for Baku-Erbil alliance, Azerbaijan has launched a propaganda campaign to show that the Kurdish interests are consonant with those of Baku in Karabakh dispute. Yazidi Kurds with a population of 300,000 are the biggest racial minority in Armenia, and Azerbaijani media frequently air programs of alleged Armenian abuses of this minority.
In examination of bilateral economic goals, it should be taken into account that the Kurdish government will certainly face serious challenges given its current policies, and this is, firstly, because a majority of Baghdad political factions question the KRG’s centrifugal approaches to the energy production and making revenues off the course of the federal budget, and this leads to prevailing of Bagdad-Erbil differences. Secondly, the geopolitical effects of Erbil’s arbitrary foreign relations can prove troublesome to Iraq's ties with the neighbors.
Dangerous Israeli alliance making
Baku-Erbil expansion of relations at present meets geopolitical goals of other regional actors and practically involves the two actors in regional rivalry, something awakening some sensitivities.
Firstly and most importantly, in recent years, both Azerbaijan and the Kurdistan region, due to their common borders with the Islamic Republic of Iran, have been the focus of the strategists of the Israeli regime to strengthen its presence and influence near the borders of its archenemy in order to create a balance of threats. Meanwhile, the military and security requirements of these two small actors and Israeli alignment with their regional ambitions have caused Baku and Erbil to cozy up to Tel Aviv.
Israel sells Azerbaijan weapons and gets oil in return. According to reports, about half of Israeli oil is still supplied by Azerbaijan, and almost 70 percent of Azerbaijan's weapons are Israeli-made. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov earlier said that the skillful use of advanced and precise weapons by the Azerbaijani armed forces, including Israeli-made drones, “played an exceptional role in Azerbaijan's victory [in the Karabakh war]." The opening of the Azerbaijani embassy in the occupied Palestinian territories a few months ago indicates the start of a new era in their bilateral ties.
Deepening these relations, on the other side, has escalated Baku tensions with Tehran. Azerbaijan hopes that it can build direct route access to its Autonomous Nakhchivan Republic on the strength of Turkish and Israeli supports. Tehran argues that such access via Zangezor corridor brings regional instabilities and jeopardizes Iran's geopolitical role in energy and exports to Europe, as it at the same time constantly threatens Iran's national security trough feeding pan-Turkism.
Therefore, energy, security, and military cooperation have played an important role in expansion of the Israeli relations with Kurdistan region. Their ties were initiated with the second Iraqi-Kurdish war of 1970, but they flourished after the US invasion of Iraq and ouster of the Baathist rule. According to a report published by the Guardian in 2005, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces were trained by secret Israeli forces in Erbil. The Kurdish oil sales to Israel started at that time. According to some reports, the Kurdistan region sold 38 percent of its oil to Israel in December 2022. After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his support for the Kurdish independence referendum in 2017, their relations expanded further. And in line with the 2019 Arab-Israeli normalization agreement, Erbil hosted a meeting to review the normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries, infuriating Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned Erbil leaders about the sabotage and espionage activities of the Israelis against Iran's national security from inside Kurdistan.
Actually, the Israelis are struggling to push forward this tripartite alliance in opposition to Iran tightening the noose of Axis of Resistance on Tel Aviv and the occupied territories from Lebanon to Syria to Gaza and give the strategy of “death with thousands stabs” a new aspect. From Tel Aviv's viewpoint, cemented Tel Aviv relations with Baku and Erbil can facilitate intelligence cooperation and operational coordination for anti-Iranian activities, an issue causing Tehran's sensitivity to the political activities of its two northern and western neighbors.
