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National Security

Tiny Azerbaijan unleashes pop-power against Iran’s mullahs

By Joby Warrick,October 14, 2012

View Photo Gallery - : Azerbaijan relishes its anti-Iran role: The secular, Western-leaning…

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The latest weapon in this country’s ideological war with Iran arrived late last month in an armada of jets from California, accompanied by a private security force, dazzling pyrotechnics and a wardrobe that consisted of sequins and not much else.

A crowd of nearly 30,000 gathered to watch as the leader of this mini-invasion pranced onto a stage built on the edge of the Caspian Sea. With a shout of “Hello, lovers!” Jennifer Lopez wiggled out of her skirt and launched into a throbbing disco anthem, delighting her Azerbaijani fans and — it was hoped — infuriating the turbaned ayatollahs who live just across the water.

“You could almost feel the Iranians seething,” said an Azerbaijani official who attended the U.S. pop star’s first concert in this predominantly Shiite Muslim country of 9 million. “This stuff makes them crazy.”

The effect on Iran’s leaders is real enough, and it is at least partly by design. Azerbaijan, Iran’s neighbor and longtime rival, is coming to relish its role as the region’s anti-Iran, a secular, Western-leaning country that is working mightily to become everything that Iran is not.

As Iran sinks ever deeper into isolation and economic distress, its northern neighbor is sprinting in the opposite direction, building political and cultural ties to the West along with new pipelines connecting energy-hungry Europe with the country’s rich petroleum fields on the Caspian Sea. Where Iran is repressive and theocratic, Azerbaijan is socially and religiously tolerant, offering itself as a model of a nonsectarian, Muslim-majority society that champions women’s athletics and embraces Western music and entertainers.

It also enthusiastically pursues diplomatic and business ties with Israel, the Jewish state that Iranian officials have threatened to destroy.

Azerbaijan’s leaders insist that such policies have nothing to do with Iran, and they point to a record of mostly cordial relations with the vastly larger, notoriously peevish republic to the south. Yet, with each stride toward modernity — and with every Western diva who arrives to croon and titillate on Baku’s expanding international stage — Azerbaijan chips away at the legitimacy of Iran’s government and fuels discontent among ordinary Iranians, say Western officials who study the region.

“It is one of the most serious threats to the long-term viability of the Iranian regime,” said Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who now works as a private consultant. “Every day that Azerbaijan grows stronger economically and more connected to the Euro-Atlantic community — that’s another day in which the Iranian regime grows weaker.”

It is hardly a perfect role model. The government in Baku is dominated by a single political party, and it has frequently come under criticism by independent watchdogs for its human rights record and alleged corruption. Azerbaijan also is mired in a nearly two-decade-old conflict with another of its neighbors, Armenia, over control of the disputed enclave known as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Still, even as they press for faster reforms, Western governments are seeing a lot to like about a country whose steady ascent makes Iran’s failings appear even more wretched by comparison.

“Iranians now see Azerbaijan emerging as a regional player at a time when they are being sidelined by sanctions,” said a Baku-based Western diplomat who insisted on anonymity in discussing his country’s geopolitical assessments. “They see new embassies opening and new foreign investment pouring in. . . . Azerbaijan is gaining, and Iran is losing.”

A cultural coming out

The visit to Baku by the pop star known as J-Lo was only one in a string of events marking the cultural coming out of a newly assertive Azerbaijan. Concert promoters have lured a steady stream of A-list Western entertainers to the country in recent weeks, including fellow pop icon Rihanna, who arrived in this Caspian seaport two weeks after Lopez’s Baku premiere on Sept. 23. Rihanna was followed by blond songstress Shakira, the closer in a triumvirate of female performers known for skimpy costumes and sexually provocative dance moves.

If Baku’s mostly Muslim concert-goers were offended, they showed no signs of it. Tens of thousands of young Azerbaijanis paid the equivalent of a week’s salary to dance along with Lopez at her show in Baku’s Crystal Hall, a lavish arena built on a small finger of land jutting into the Caspian. Many others camped outside a downtown hotel for a chance to glimpse the American pop icon.

“Best show I’ve ever seen,” gushed “Leyla,” a Baku woman who posted a pithy review on a fan site after Lopez’s performance.