Bush Hawks Eye Northern Iran

by William O. Beeman

According to the Washington Times, Pentagon officials have been meeting quietly with Mahmud Ali Chehregani, who heads the Southern Azerbaijan National Awakeness Movement (SANAM, also known by the acronym GAMOH). SANAM operates inside Iran, in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan -- a region separate from the country of Azerbaijan, the former Soviet republic on Iran's northern border. Defense officials emphasized their meetings were not aimed at supporting or encouraging a change in Iran's government, according to the Times. It is hard to believe such an assertion.

It is now no secret that the Bush administration would like to see regime change in Iran. However, military planners know that an Iraq-style invasion could not win in a military conflict with Iranian troops. Therefore the most satisfactory strategy for the White House hawks will be to try to find an indigenous resistance movement, provide it with financial and possibly logistical support, and hope for the best.

Chehregani seems ideal. He is an academic (a linguist), and a charismatic figure. He was a popular Majlis (parliament) representative from Azerbaijan, elected with 600,000 votes. He was imprisoned three years ago for his strong protests against the Islamic regime, and freed with the help of Amnesty International and a letter from UN chief Kofi Annan. More important, he espouses a secular, democratic government for Iran.

Iranian Azerbaijan is fertile ground for a new Iranian political movement. It has traditionally been the part of Iran with the loosest connections to Tehran. Although culturally Iranian, the majority of its population speaks Azeri -- a Turkic language. Armenian, Assyrian and Kurdish communities make up significant minority populations in the region.

Over the past century, several major anti-government movements have been launched from the region, starting with Iran's constitutional revolution in 1905. Azerbaijanis also claim to have started the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. Its independent spirit was exploited by the Soviet Union in the immediate post-World War II period, when Azerbaijanis tried to set up an independent People's Republic of Azerbaijan in 1945. For a short period, they succeeded. Then the Soviet Union tried to convert it into a communist republic. The United States intervened at that time, and Iran took the extraordinary measure of using the World Court in the Hague to get the Soviets to withdraw.

Ever since this period, the Iranian central state has kept a wary eye on the Azerbaijanis. Under the Shah, publication in Azeri and other minority languages was repressed, and although there has been some relaxation of this policy, publication and schoo instruction in Azeri is discouraged.

Under the Islamic Republic, chief resistance to the form of government espoused by Ayatollah Khomeini came from Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who had extensive support in Azerbaijan. When Khomeini held a referendum on the kind of government Iranians were to choose, he gave voters only one choice: an Islamic republic with the chief ayatollah as head. Shariatmadari lobbied for wider choice, and his followers rioted and occupied the Tabriz radio station. Eventually, Shariatmadari was arrested and stripped of his religious credentials. Azerbaijanis were deeply resentful of this action.

The idea of independence for Azerbaijan is still alive. Chehregani says he was welcomed warmly across the Iranian border in the Republic of Azerbaijan recently. That country's citizens would welcome reunification with Iranian Azerbaijan, something that the Iranians do not favor. Chehregani has espoused a government for Iran that would be a federation, somewhat like the United States or Germany, where individual states would have a degree of autonomy.

President Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan is 80 years old and in poor health. He collapsed suddenly on June 3. Although few people expect much change in that nation upon his passing (his son is being groomed for the presidency), one never knows.

The United States is interested in the developments in Iranian Azerbaijan not only because of the possibility of launching regime change from an Azeri platform, but because of something much more important: oil.

Both Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan lie between the great Caspian oil fields and the oil fields of Northern Iraq. The transport of land-locked Caspian oil is one of the great economic and engineering puzzles of modern times. If Iranian Azerbaijan were to take a sharp turn toward the United States, a new pipeline linking the Caspian fields with the Iraqi oil delivery system would be constructed in a trice.

The schemes for transforming Iran seem to be proliferating. Besides courting Chehregani, strategies include using the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, the anti-Iranian government terrorist group in Iraq, restoring the monarchy and direct military intervention. With so many plans in play, can anyone doubt that at least one will eventually be activated? Stay tuned.