Baku, Azerbaijan, March 6
By Azer Ahmadbayli – Trend:
It is no secret that along with sanctions and other means of pressure, the anti-Iranian arsenal contains a sensitive factor of ethnic minorities as one of the ways to undermine the statehood of the Islamic Republic.
Posters with the slogan "Karabakh is Armenia", which were raised at the meeting of the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan with representatives of the Armenian Diaspora during his recent visit to Tehran, as well as slogans chanted during the meeting, caused sharp discontent among the Iranian Azerbaijanis.
It wasn’t hard to predict the angrily response of the Azerbaijanis, but what is interesting is that who was the mastermind behind such provocative action, which, if escalated, potentially could have led to violence and internal destabilization in the large part of Iran.
Iranian authorities immediately realized possible consequences of the incident.
Beware of the possible protests of Azerbaijanis during the Friday prayer, posters with the quote of the Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “Karabakh is the Islamic land” began to appear in the Azerbaijani-populated city of Tabriz, Azerbaijani media reported.
Representatives of the Iranian intelligence were also concerned that the same day tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis would gather at a stadium to cheer for their favorite football club. Videos from the stadium were shared on social networks, where thousands of Azerbaijani fans chanted "Karabakh is ours and will be ours" before the match.
That was followed by an official reaction.
Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of Iran Bahram Ghasemi in an interview to the Azerbaijani media said that meeting between the Armenian Prime Minister and a group of Armenians living in Tehran that was held in “Ararat” sports club is natural. However, displaying posters in Armenian related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an unauthorized and an unacceptable step, and the Islamic Republic of Iran does not support it.
The Iranian embassy in Azerbaijan has also condemned the action: “Friendship and fraternity between Iran and Azerbaijan are eternal and no provocation can harm them.”
Over the past few years, Iran had to face internal incidents of ethnic character: bloody events in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, violence in the Arab-populated city of Ahwaz, armed clashes with the Kurds.
Who hired the Armenian Diaspora of Iran to cause tension, while as during the bloodiest years of the Karabakh war, it remained inconspicuous and quiet, compared to Armenian minorities in other countries.
Why did the Iranian Armenians decide to express their opinion now, when any internal shock could become fatal for Iran?
Using the Armenians, who are irreplaceable in such dirty games (as it happened many times before in history), someone is trying to test the protest potential in the Azerbaijani community of Iran.
Previous incidents on ethnic grounds would have seemed insignificant if it had been possible to provoke Iranian Azerbaijanis, whose population, according to various data, ranges from 20 to 30 million people, that is 25 to nearly 40 percent of Iran's total population.
Along the way, if the discontent turned into violence, it would most likely cause alienation between Azerbaijan and Iran, which is a wishful dream of Armenian authorities.
It does not matter where the order came from to provoke part of the population of the Islamic Republic toward protests – from the depths of the Western intelligence services or the global Armenian Diaspora.
I wouldn't be surprised if the former uses the latter in exchange for certain preferences.