An anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Azerbaijani President Aliyev as a Jew wearing a yarmulke with a huge nose and sidelocks is circulating on Iranian social media.
The cartoon is signed “Rabbi Ilham Alef”. This is such an allusion to Aliyev’s supposedly Jewish name (as Iranian anti-Semites understand it), Jewish origin and spiritual qualifications in Judaism. It is highly regrettable, that the social media in Armenia is also picking up this anti-Semitic cartoon and spreading it around.
The author of the cartoon is Ehsan Movakhedyan, an employee of the Tehran Institute of International Relations of the University Tabatabai. He is cooperating with the Institute of National Security Studies at the National Defense University (a structure subordinate to the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces).
معرفی می کنم:
خاخام الهام دماغ علیف!#جمهوری_باکو#صدام_باکو#الهام_دماغ#الهام_علی_اف #دالان_تورانی_ناتو pic.twitter.com/NHKa5KeTSU— Ehsan Movahedian (@ultra_ehsan) December 7, 2022
Movakhedyan is known for his uncompromising struggle against the “Zionist regime of Baku” (he recently stated that “Azerbaijan has become a colony of Israel”). This cartoon is part of a large-scale anti-Semitic campaign that the Iranian regime has recently unleashed. Moreover, he unleashed not against Israel, but against a neighboring Azerbaijan, with mostly Shiite population.
The anti-Semitic card is being played by the Iranian regime in the hope of provoking Shiite marginal circles to revolt against the “Jewish government of Aliyev-Alef.”
Why does Azerbaijan scare the Ayatollah regime?
Because it is a Muslim, moreover a Shiite country, and the same time – the main economic and military partner of Israel among the post-Soviet states.
The ayatollahs consider the strengthening of relations between Baku and Jerusalem as the major threat for themselves. Among these reasons, there Teheran is afraid that other Muslim countries of the former USSR will follow Azerbaijan’s lead, and that Israel will become a strategic ally of a powerful Turkic bloc, which will include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has played recently an important role in the reconciliation between Ankara and Jerusalem. He is a key figure in the formation of the Muslim Turkic bloc from the former Soviet republics, where a total of about 80 million representatives of the Turkic ethnic group live.
The ayatollahs do not want to attack the Turkic bloc directly, and therefore they chose as a target for the strike the connection with Israel, in which Baku announced the opening of an embassy in November.
The exercises of the IRGC and Iranian ground forces near the border of Azerbaijan in October were announced by Tehran directly as a “threat to the Zionists”, which allegedly turned the south of Azerbaijan into a base for “initiating riots.” The IRGC produced propaganda videos in Azerbaijani that threatened Israel.
There is the Hüseyniyyun group, created by the IRGC from adherents of the Khomeinist ideology, who fled to Iran from Azerbaijan, which operates in Iran now. They are engaged in the inflammatory propaganda activities, in particular, to promote the topic of Jewish control over Baku.”
“Azerbaijan has become a province of the Zionist regime… The Aliyev government’s obedience to the interests of the Zionists has become the cause of tense relations with Iran,” Tawhid Ibrahimli, one of the leaders of the group, told the ISNA news agency. “For 30 years the Zionists worked in Azerbaijan and today only 5% of the country’s population supports Iran. But in 5 years we will be able to eliminate the damage,” he stressed.
Ibrahimli also predicted the creation of a “Caucasian Hezbollah” as planned by Qasem Soleimani – liquidated by the Americans in 2020. This is a matter of mutual concern for Israel and Azerbaijan alike. Another Hüseyniyyun leader, Orkhan Mammadov, stressed in late November that “Iran can conduct operations inside Azerbaijan against NATO and Zionist elements and their supporters who have invaded Azerbaijan.
None of these elements are Azerbaijanis – nor are they considered representative of the Azerbaijani people! It is quite possible that in this way Iran is trying to intimidate Aliyev and quarrel him with Israel. It is clear that for Islamists and anti-Semites, the image in the form of a religious Jew is the most terrible insult. After all, we well remember the Islamist cartoons that portrayed the religious Jew Mubarak and other leaders of the Arab countries who have peaceful relations with Israel. Haters of Israel write down as religious Jews everyone they don’t like.
But at the moment, Iran’s subversive anti-Semitic activities are not bearing much fruit. This is due not only to the fact that Jews have lived in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan for more than a thousand years, but also to the fact that with the special assistance that Israel provided to Azerbaijan during the second Karabakh war two years ago, playing, according to experts, a decisive role. As for Iran, the antisemitism had become there an official ideology. President Raisi just recently expressed the views doubting the facts of the Holocaust.
Remember: Annual festivals of Holocaust cartoons are held in Teheran with the participation on neo Nazis from Europe and the US and former President of Iran Ahmadinejad once boasted about his Holocaust denial propaganda. Iran today is presenting a direct threat both to Israel and Azerbaijan. And this makes the ties between the two countries even stronger.
Moshe Friedman
