Israeli weapons quietly helped Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh, much to the dismay of Armenians in the region.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel has quietly helped boost Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan before its lightning offensive last month that returned control to the ethnic Armenian enclave, officials and experts say. .

Just a few weeks before Azerbaijan launched its 24-hour assault on September 19Azerbaijani military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern Israeli air base and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight tracking data and Armenian diplomats, even as Western governments urged peace talks.

The flights unsettled Armenian officials in Yerevan, who have long been wary of the strategic alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan, and shed light on Israel’s national interests in the restive region south of the Caucasus Mountains.

“For us, it is a great concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told The Associated Press. In a series of diplomatic exchanges, Akopian said he had expressed alarm to Israeli politicians and lawmakers in recent weeks over Israeli arms shipments.

“I don’t see why Israel shouldn’t be in a position to express at least some concern about the fate of people who are being expelled from their homeland,” he told the AP.

The bombing of Azerbaijan in September with heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones (largely supplied by Israel and Turkey, according to experts) forced Armenian separatist authorities to lay down your weapons and sit down for talks on the future of the breakaway region.

The Azerbaijani offensive killed more than 200 Armenians in the enclave, the vast majority of them combatants, and about 200 Azerbaijani soldiers, according to officials.

There are ramifications beyond the volatile 1,700-square-mile (4,400-square-kilometer) enclave. The fighting caused more than 100,000 people (more than 80% of the enclave’s ethnic Armenian residents) to flee in the past two weeks. Azerbaijan is committed to respecting the rights of ethnic Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the exodus “a direct act of ethnic cleansing.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected the accusation, saying the departures are a “personal and individual decision and have nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Israel’s foreign and defense ministries declined to comment on the use of Israeli weapons in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenia’s concerns about its military partnership with Azerbaijan. In July, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Baku, the capital of Azerbaijanwhere he praised the countries’ military cooperation and the joint “fight against terrorism.”

Israel has a strong interest in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy, Iran. It is also a lucrative customer for sophisticated weapons.

“There is no doubt about our position supporting the defense of Azerbaijan,” said Arkady Mil-man, former Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and current senior researcher at the Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran.”

Although once resource-poor Israel now has abundant natural gas off its Mediterranean coast, Azerbaijan still supplies at least 40% of Israel’s oil needs, keeping cars and trucks on its roads. Israel turned to Baku’s offshore deposits in the late 1990s, creating a pipeline through the Turkish shipping hub of Ceyan that isolated Iran, which at the time was capitalizing on oil flowing through its pipelines from Kazakhstan. to world markets.

Azerbaijan He has long been suspicious of Iran., its Shiite Muslim neighbor on the Caspian Sea, and is irritated by its support for Armenia, which is Orthodox Christian. Iran has accused Azerbaijan of hosting a base for Israeli intelligence operations against it, a claim Azerbaijan and Israel deny.

“It is clear to us that Israel has an interest in maintaining a military presence in Azerbaijan, using its territory to observe Iran,” said Armenian diplomat Tigran Balayan.

Few have benefited more from the close relations between the two countries than Israeli military contractors. Experts estimate that Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020, giving Azerbaijan an advantage over Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defense industry.

“Israeli weapons have played a very important role in allowing the Azerbaijani military to achieve its objectives,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales.

Israeli long-range missiles and explosive drones known as loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, Wezeman said, even at times striking deep inside Armenia itself. Meanwhile, Israeli Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles have protected Azerbaijan’s airspace by shooting down missiles and drones, he added.

Just before last month’s offensive, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced that the military conducted a Barak-8 missile test. Its developer, Israel Aerospace Industries, declined to comment on Azerbaijan’s use of its air defense system and combat drones.

But Azerbaijan has praised the success of Israeli drones in breaching Armenian defenses and tipping the balance in 2020’s bloody six-week war.

In 2016, its defense minister called a combat drone made by the Israel Aeronautical Group “a nightmare for the Armenian military,” which backed the region’s separatists during Azerbaijan’s conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh that year.

President Ilham Aliyev in 2021, a year of deadly border clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia, was caught on camera smiling while petting the small Israeli “Harop” suicide drone during a weapons exhibition.

Israel has deployed similar suicide drones during deadly army raids against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

“We are happy about this cooperation, it was very supportive and very beneficial for defense,” Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Israel, Mukhtar Mammadov, told the AP, speaking generally about Israel’s support for the Azerbaijani military. “We’re not hiding it.”

At a crucial moment in early September, as diplomats scrambled to avoid an escalation, flight tracking data shows Azerbaijani cargo planes began arriving at Ovda, a military base in southern Israel with a runway 3,000 meters long, known as the only airport. in Israel that deals with the export of explosives.

The AP identified at least six flights operated by Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines that landed at Ovda Airport between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 from Baku, according to aviation tracking website FlightRadar24.com. Azerbaijan launched its offensive two days later.

During those six days, the Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport remained on the runway at Ovda for several hours before departing for Baku or Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, just north of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In March, an investigation by Haaretz newspaper said it had counted 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights to Ovda airport between 2016 and 2020. The sudden increases in flights coincided with increases in fighting in Nagorno-Karabkh, it found.

“During the 2020 war, we saw flights every other day and now, again, we see this intensity of flights leading to the current conflict,” said Akopian, the Armenian ambassador. “It is clear to us what is happening.”

Israel’s Defense Ministry declined to comment on the flights. Azerbaijan’s ambassador, Mammadov, said he was aware of the reports but declined to comment.

The decision to support an autocratic government against an ethnic and religious minority has fueled a debate in Israel over the country’s permissive arms export policies. Of the top 10 global arms manufacturers, only Israel and Russia lack legal restrictions on arms exports based on human rights concerns.

“If anyone can relate to the (Nagorno-Karabakh) Armenians’ continued fear of ethnic cleansing it is the Jewish people,” said Avidan Freedman, founder of the Israeli advocacy group Yanshoof, which seeks to stop the sale of Israeli weapons to rapists. of human rights. “We are not interested in becoming accomplices.”