ISRAEL, IRAN WAGE INTELLIGENCE WAR IN AZERBAIJAN AND GEORGIA

Azerbaijan and Georgia have increasingly found themselves involved in the rising tensions between Israel and Iran and the international anti-nuclear campaign. Moreover, the Caucasus has become an area of confrontation between the two countries’ intellegence services. In recent weeks, a series of bomb attacks targeting Israel’s embassies have been disrupted in Azerbaijan and Georgia, while the explosion of an embassy car in the Indian capital on February 13 injured two people, including a diplomat. “In recent months, we have witnessed several attempts to attack Israeli citizens and Jews in several countries, including Azerbaijan, Thailand and others,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “In each instance, we succeeded in foiling the attacks in cooperation with local authorities. Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were behind all of these attempted attacks.” On February 21, one month after a terror attack against Israelis was foiled in Azerbaijan, local authorities arrested the members of another suspected terrorist group, belonging to Hezbollah and holding Iranian passports.

The National Security Ministry stated on Azerbaijan's state channel AzTV that it had arrested an unspecified number of people suspected of preparing terror attacks against foreign citizens. The group was set up by Hamid, a member of the Iranian military group Sepah, also known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Hadji Abbas, the head of “Moqavemat” (translated as Resistance), the military branch of Hezbollah. Members of the terrorist group were gathering intelligence and had acquired a large number of weapons and explosives, the ministry said. It gave no further details.

The ministry's announcement came hours after the authorities arrested some 20 young people in Nardaran, a village near Baku with deep Islamic traditions. Among those who were arrested were Anar Bayramli, who presents himself as a reporter of Iran’s Fars news agency and Seher TV, Ramil Dadashev, a driver of Seher TV and Ali Mammadov, a nephew of Balagardash Dadashov, who was declared wanted on terror charges after the failed plot in January.

In January, Azerbaijan’s security forces arrested two local residents accused of plotting to kill two teachers at a Jewish school in Baku on orders of Iranian intelligence service. “Sixty to seventy percent of Nardaran’s residents are maintaining permanent links with Iran, and some of them have links to the intelligence service of that country,” head of the local police department Zaur Badalov stated to Vesti.az in a comment on recent arrests in the suburb. According to Turan news agency, seven out of the nine arrested residents of Nardaran are charged with high treason. In addition, up to 10 persons were arrested in Baku, Sumgait, Ganja and Jalilabad, the agency noted.

“The moves against Israel taken in other countries and thwarted in Baku are undoubtedly interconnected,” said Arastun Orujlu, head of the independent Baku-based think tank East-West. “Iran tries to provoke Israel. Iran needs an external factor to mobilize and unite the society, but it realizes that it will lose a big war. That is why Iran is trying to provoke Israel to engage in smaller-scale confrontation.”

Iran's Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations of complicity in the bomb attacks. According to its spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, “Israel has bombed its embassies ...  to tarnish Iran's friendly ties with the host countries ... Israel perpetrated the terrorist actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”

On February 16, Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah denied any role in the plots, saying it was an “insult” to believe his group would take part in such small attacks and hinting that Hezbollah plans to target senior officials. At the same time, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Iran, Javanshir Akhundov, accusing Azerbaijan of assisting Israeli intelligence in the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist last month. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed when two men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car on January 11. At least four scientists associated with Iran's nuclear program have been assassinated since 2010, and a fifth was wounded in a bomb attack.

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, “Azerbaijan had helped agents to get in contact with the Israeli intelligence agency.” The Director General of the Iranian Foreign Ministry' Office for Commonwealth and Caucasus Affairs called on the Azerbaijani government to stop the anti-Iranian activities of Mossad agents in that country. The statements were apparently inspired by a report in the Times of London that Mossad agents allegedly use Azerbaijan as a “prime territory for the Israeli intelligence service to gather information on Tehran’s activities.” The report quoted an anonymous agent called “Shimon” who said that Azerbaijan was “ground zero for the Israeli intelligence work ... Our presence here is quiet, but substantial. We have increased our presence in the past year, and it gets us very close to Iran. This is a wonderfully porous country.” According to the report, several individuals involved in the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists have escaped to Azerbaijan.

Official Baku has denied Iran’s claims and called them “absurd, unsubstantiated and false.” “Azerbaijan will never allow terror activity on its territory and we set out this position in our note of response,” said Elman Abdullayev, a spokesperson of Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry. “I think what we are looking at here is a low-level asymmetric conflict between intelligence services – Iranian and Israeli – in which the territory and sovereignty of other countries are not well-respected,” Wayne Merry, a former U.S. State Department official stated to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service. Merry, who is now senior fellow for Europe and Eurasia at the American Foreign Policy Council, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., said that due to Georgia and Azerbaijan's proximity to and visa-free-travel agreements with Iran, Israeli facilities in those countries will continue to make for tempting targets.