BACKGROUND: Although its policies in the Caspian basin have generally been circumspect, Iran is not necessarily a status quo power in this region. It attacked Azerbaijani oil platforms in 2001 and subsequently threatened Kazakh explorations in the Caspian in disputes over who owns that sea’s waters. Since then, in 2002 the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) uncovered intelligence showing that elements of Iran’s clerical army, the Pasdaran, were secretly providing training and logistic support to the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Iran is also tied to support for radical religious and separatist movements in Azerbaijan, and in 2005 the London Sunday Telegraph reported that Pasdaran had begun secretly training Chechen rebels in sophisticated terror techniques to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces. These examples illustrate the multifarious nature of the geopolitical threats to security in this region and Iran’s capability to seriously expand them. And since the ability of all states and energy producers to survive and/or produce that energy is tied to the presence or absence of such shocks, the geostrategic situation here is crucial beyond Central Asia’s borders. Iran’s threats include the use of conventional or potentially nuclear weapons to threaten local governments and to provide what might be called extended deterrence for insurgent groups among them whom it already has cultivated and supported. Although Iran’s conventional arsenal pales relative to those of Moscow and Washington; a nuclear capability greatly augments its deterrence capability and potentially frees it as it did Pakistan to conduct guerrilla campaigns against hostile governments in its neighborhood. In its most recent exercises conducted in the Straits of Hormuz, named ‘Holy Prophet’, in the first week of April 2006, Iran attempted to send Washington a message of its capability made up of what has also become habitual Iranian boasting about its new conventional capabilities. While virtually every foreign analyst dismissed the announcement of new weapons as nothing new or as being mainly for domestic and local consumption, the fact remains that even if these weapons are not as potent as Iran claims they are, possession of them enhances its capabilities in the Caspian Sea as well as in the Straits of Hormuz. In those exercises Iran claimed to have tested a new radar-invisible, stealth multiple-head ballistic missile, Fajr-3 with a range of 1200 Kilometers, the Kowsar land to sea anti-ship missile. It also claims to have tested the world’s fastest torpedo, a rocket-propelled torpedo called the Hoot (whale), from which no ship can escape, evidently based on the Russian Shkval, and a ‘super-modern flying boat’, possibly a derivation from a Russian wing in ground platform (WIG), as well as jets and helicopters. Although Iran claims to have made all these new missiles itself, again foreign analysts believe that they largely derive from Russian, Chinese, or North Korean models or from assistance provided through the acquisition of Western technology, not domestic ingenuity.

IMPLICATIONS: The address of the recent Iranian saber-rattling is clear: General Yahya Rahim Safavi, head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said on April 5 that the U.S. must recognize Iran as a big regional power. Since Iran’s capabilities to attack shipping and energy platforms in the Caspian, threaten neighboring governments with missiles, and defend against their air attacks are real enough, if they were buttressed by nuclear weapons Iran’s ability to incite mischief in the area would grow enormously. Azerbaijan in particular is already increasingly uneasy about what might happen if the United States and Iran come to blows. In advance of President Ilham Aliyev’s U.S. visit in late April, the Azerbaijani media candidly referred to perceptions of intense U.S. pressure to join an anti-Iranian alliance despite statements by Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov that Azerbaijan would not join a coalition against any particular power. Nonetheless, Azimov did indicate Baku’s concern about Iranian activities in the disputed sector of the Caspian Sea. He also made clear that Iran’s nuclear program as well as the Armenian nuclear power reactor evoke serious apprehensions in Azerbaijan. At the same time, the Azerbaijani press reports charged that if Azerbaijan did ally itself with Washington and allow U.S. forces overflight and even limited basing rights there, Iran would probably hit it with multiple acts of sabotage and insurgency form within. Iran could also invade its air space and strike it with its missiles, including its oil industry. Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security, Eldar Makhmudov, also charged that Al-Qaeda was seeking to recruit local girls to be Shakhids, (martyrs) and carry out suicide terrorist operations. It is hardly inconceivable that Iran could also recruit terrorists from within Azerbaijan for such purposes based on existing or future cells that it develops within the country.

CONCLUSIONS: Even a cursory assessment of Iran’s present capabilities makes clear that it does have the means to make a great deal of trouble for many South Caucasian and Central Asian governments and even for Russia, especially in the North Caucasus. The pressure generated by Iran’s nuclearization and America’s determination to prevent it are also narrowing the space for maneuver available to local governments. But if Iran were to successfully become a nuclear power, their space for maneuver would narrow even further. It is quite clear that a nuclear capability, added to Iran’s regionally potent and growing conventional capability, and its highly developed terrorist connections constitutes a considerable threat capability directed against all of its neighbors, and not just in the Gulf. This development also bears out the old axiom and paradox that nuclear capability and deterrence actually in some sense heighten the possibility for conventional wars at smaller scales of the spectrum of conflict. Iran’s growing capabilities and unmitigated belligerence highlights the folly of the Russian and Chinese policies of supplying it lavishly with weapons and technology. As Russian analysts are now coming to realize more than ever before, the capabilities transferred to Iran could be used to threaten Moscow’s vital interests and possibly even Beijing’s as well. Whatever the consequences of Iran’s nuclearization or of the campaign to stop it might be in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, they will be no less important insofar as the Caspian littoral and Greater Central Asia are concerned.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA. The views expressed here do not represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Dept. or the U.S. Government.