Bolton Visits Caucasus Amid Anti-Iran Campaign

This article has been republished with permission from Eurasianet.

A senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump is visiting the Caucasus, where he is expected to try to enlist the region's three governments in Washington's campaign of isolating Iran. But leaders in the Caucasus, wary of confronting Tehran, will likely instead be promoting their own interests to an administration that has thus far largely neglected the region.

National Security Adviser John Bolton is scheduled to arrive in Baku on October 24, before visiting Yerevan and Tbilisi. It will be the highest-profile visit yet by a Trump administration official to all three countries of the Caucasus. None of the three currently has a U.S. ambassador, and policymakers have complained of a lack of American engagement.

Bolton has said his visit will focus on regional security. He told radio host Hugh Hewitt before the trip that he will be “in the Caucasus to see the very significant geographical role that they have dealing with Iran, dealing with Russia, dealing with Turkey.”

In particular, Bolton is expected to focus on Iran, a country that maintains good relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, but which the Trump administration is aggressively attempting to isolate. Bolton is a longtime Iran hawk and a leading advocate in the administration for leaving the Iran nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions on Tehran.

“I can't figure out what else [besides Iran] he would have to discuss” in the Caucasus, said Paul Stronski, senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, DC, think tank.

“Last month at the United Nations, Trump called for international action to deter Iran, but his efforts have for the most part been unsuccessful,” said Carey Cavanaugh, a retired U.S. ambassador who worked in the Caucasus, in an interview with Armenian news website news.am. “Now Bolton is trying to secure support in the Caucasus and in Moscow so as to counter Iran influence.”

In its long diplomatic and economic campaign against Iran, Washington has tried to force other countries to also curtail ties with Tehran. But it has tended to look the other way at the Caucasus countries' growing ties with Iran, given their geographic proximity. Especially in the case of Armenia, Iran provides a critical lifeline as its borders to the east (Azerbaijan) and west (Turkey) are closed.

“It's always a friction point,” Stronski told Eurasianet. “Because of U.S. concerns and U.S. sanctions, these countries have not developed as robust economic ties [with Iran] as you would expect for such close geographic neighbors. But they have always been able to push back at criticism, simply because they have no other options.”

It is not clear, however, whether the Trump administration intends to stick to this hands-off policy with regard to the Caucasus and Iran. “U.S. policy is so muddled right now that it's really hard to figure that out,” Stronski said. “The M.O. of this administration is to make big pronouncements and then not be as clear in the follow through. But Bolton and Trump certainly feel strongly about Iran and so maybe they will be putting in that second level of guidance.”

In any case, the increasing pressure has complicated the Caucasus countries' already precarious geopolitical position.

“The pullout from the JCPOA puts these countries in a difficult position,” Stronski said, referring to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. “The horrible deterioration in U.S.-Russia relations has made their balancing act very difficult, and to the south you have a similar deterioration. It really puts these countries between a rock and a hard place.”

While Iran is likely at the top of Bolton’s agenda, his interlocutors in the Caucasus may instead try to steer the conversation away from Iran and towards their priorities instead.

In Tbilisi, Georgian government officials are unlikely to want to get drawn into a U.S.-Iran conflict, instead preferring to keep the agenda focused on issues like security cooperation, said Kornely Kakachia, the director of the Georgian Institute of Politics.

“Georgia remains a steadfast supporter of U.S. initiatives,” Kakachia told Eurasianet. “However, due to permanent pressure from Russia it can't endanger its national interest, which seeks pragmatic and balanced relations with Iran. So, as in the last decade, Tbilisi will try to find a delicate balance between its regional interests and those of the West.”

Similarly, the Azerbaijani side is likely to seek more active engagement of the U.S in resolving the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, said Zaur Shiriyev, a Baku-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The Azerbaijani side is reluctant to be seen in Iran as participating in U.S. policy. It could be misinterpreted by Tehran, and Baku doesn’t want to damage its bilateral relations with Iran,” Shiriyev told Eurasianet. “The Nagorno-Karabakh issue will be the top issue [for the Azerbaijanis when Bolton visits], but it is hard to expect much new initiative from the U.S. side,” he added.

“Baku nurtures hopes for U.S. efforts as co-chairman of the Minsk Group of the OSCE,” the body attempting to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, wrote the haqqin.az website in a recent commentary. “And, of course, Baku will be conducting negotiations with Bolton exactly on this.” 

In Armenia, Bolton will be meeting with a new leadership which has promised dramatic domestic reforms but thus far vowed no significant foreign policy shifts. Still, Yerevan is trying to formulate a strategy for dealing with an administration that has moved away from the traditional U.S. emphasis – at least rhetorically – on democratization and toward a “more neorealist approach which is predicated on interests-sharing and functions-sharing,” said Eduard Abrahamyan, a London-based analyst of Armenia.

“From Armenia's perspective, there is a genuine intention to balance Russia through proactive engagement with the United States on one side and with Iran from the other,” Abrahamyan told Eurasianet. “This means advancing Armenia-Iran strategic ties while being transparent with the U.S. about the core intentions.”

Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Kyiv

Caspian Sea Nations to Sign Landmark Deal

The leaders of the five states bordering the Caspian Sea meet in Kazakhstan on Sunday to sign a landmark deal on the inland sea which boasts a wealth of oil and gas reserves and sturgeon.

Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan are expected to agree a long-awaited convention on the legal status of the sea, which has been disputed since the collapse of the Soviet Union rendered obsolete agreements between Tehran and Moscow.

Talks in the port city of Aktau should help ease tensions in a militarized region where the legal limbo has scuppered lucrative projects and strained relations among nations along the Caspian's 7,000-kilometre (4,350-mile)  shoreline.

The Kremlin said the convention keeps most of the sea in shared use but divides up the seabed and underground resources. 

It does not allow military bases from any other countries to be sited on the Caspian.

'Once a Frontier Oil Province' 

Sunday's summit is the fifth of its kind since 2002 but there have been more than 50 lower-level meetings since the Soviet breakup spawned four new countries on the shores of the Caspian.

The deal will settle a long-lasting dispute on whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake—which means it falls under different international laws. 

The draft agreement, briefly made public on a Russian government portal in June, refers to the Caspian as a sea but the provisions give it "a special legal status", Russian deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin told Kommersant daily.

It is the Caspian's vast hydrocarbon reserves -- estimated at around 50 billion barrels of oil and just under 300 trillion cubic feet (8.4 trillion cubic meters) of natural gas in proved and probable reserves -- that have made a deal both vital and complex to achieve. 

"Disputes arose when the Caspian was a frontier oil province," said John Roberts, a non-resident senior fellow at Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center,  while it is "now well established, with major fields approaching peak... production."

'Expand Cooperation'

Any deal will "expand the field for multilateral cooperation" between the five states, said Ilham Shaban, who heads the Caspian Barrel think tank.

But some are likely to view it as more of a breakthrough than others.

Energy-rich but isolated Turkmenistan is particularly excited and President Gurganguly Berdymukahmedov has called for annual Caspian Sea Day celebrations from Sunday onwards.

Turkmenistan could benefit from a concession allowing the construction of underwater pipelines, which were previously blocked by the other states. 

Nevertheless, analysts caution that Turkmenistan's long-held plan to send gas through a trans-Caspian pipeline to markets in Europe via Azerbaijan is not necessarily closer to becoming reality.  

The plan was previously opposed by Russia and Iran, which could still attempt to block the pipeline—valued at up to USD 5 billion—on environmental grounds.

"A deal in Aktau is not a legal prerequisite for the construction of the Trans-Caspian Pipeline," said Kate Mallinson, Associate Fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House. "Neither will a major transport corridor to export Turkmen gas to Europe emerge overnight."

Kudos and Caviar

As previous exclusive arbiters of Caspian agreements, Russia and Iran could be seen as the new deal's biggest losers. 

But while Moscow has ceded ground on underwater pipelines "it gains political kudos for breaking a log-jam," enhancing its image as diplomatic dealmaker, said Roberts of the Eurasia Center.

Russia will welcome the clause barring third countries from having military bases on the Caspian, underscoring its military dominance there, said Shaban of Caspian Barrel. 

Iran gets the smallest share of the Caspian spoils under the new deal, but could take advantage of new legal clarity to engage in joint hydrocarbons ventures with Azerbaijan.

In the past Tehran has resorted to hostile naval manouvers to defend its claims to contested territory.  

Beyond military and economic questions, the agreement also offers hope for the Caspian's ecological diversity. 

Reportedly depleted stocks of the beluga sturgeon, whose eggs are prized globally as caviar, may now grow thanks to "a clear common regime for the waters of the Central Caspian," Roberts said.

The deal could result "not only in stricter quotas for sturgeon fishing, but in stricter enforcement of these quotas," he added.

Photo Credit: IRNA