News reports in Tehran quoted Gen. Hassan Firuzabadi, the chief of the armed forces joint staff, as having charged the government of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev with having allowed Israel free rein in Aze-rbaijan. Firuzabadi also said the awakening of the people of Azerbaijan “cannot be suppressed,” suggesting that Azer-baijan was ripe for the kind of popular uprisings now raging across the Arab world. On top of that, Firuzabadi accused Aliyev of barring Islamic rules from his country and, as a result, facing a “grim fate.”
All this has caused a considerable stink in Azerbaijan, where complaints that the Iranians perpetually interfere and back Islamic groups against the government are legion. The Iranian embassy in Baku had a simple solution: it simply denied that Firuzabadi had ever said any of the things the Tehran media had reported. It was all a “media understanding,” the embassy proclaimed.
But the biggest probable for Iran in Azerbaijan isn’t over religion 
versus secularism. It is the perception that Iran actively supports Christian Armenia against Shia Azerbaijan in their long dispute over the Christian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh—and the demands of Iran for ownership of one-fifth of the Caspian Sea, including sections with oilfields that Azerbaijan claims as its right.
Still, the Firuzabadi remarks prompted stern reactions from Baku, which first filed a formal protest with the Iranian embassy and then arrested three leaders of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, which is widely seen locally as a tool of Iran.
The Islamic Republic sent large numbers of operatives into Azerbaijan after it split from the Soviet Union in 1991. There appeared to be an expectation in Tehran that Azerbaijan was ripe for the pickings. But the populace was decidedly secular after seven decades of communist atheism and didn’t cotton to Iran’s approaches. Instead, Azerbaijan looked to Turkey, the United States and, more recently, to Israel. The Israeli link has Tehran all aflutter as it fears—or, at least, says it fears—Israel making an anti-Iran base out of Azerbaijan.
Firuzabadi’s comments on August 9 were likely prompted by his concern over close Israel-Azerbaijan ties. Certainly, those ties were the primary focus of his criticism. There are fears in Tehran that Israel will base planes in Azerbaijan and use Azerbaijan as a base for attacks on Iran’s nuclear installations.
But Firuzabadi spoke provocatively. If anyone had said of Iran what Firuzabadi said of Azerbaijan, the entire establishment in the Islamic Republic would have gone into orbit.
Firuzabadi said Azerbaijan was mistreating citizens in southern Azerbaijan who are religious, and allowing Zionists free access to Azerbaijan. “If this policy continues, it will end in darkness and it will not be possible to suppress a revolt by the people,” he said.
That raised many eyebrows even in Tehran, where many outspoken politicos agreed that Firuzabadi had been too outspoken.
